Heidsieck & Co

Heidsieck & Co is a champagne-producing business which remains situated in the famous Champagne region of France. To understand its long running heritage, we can see here a painting from 1901 that was produced by famous Czech painter and illustrator, Alphonse Mucha.

Mucha helped to supplement his income with a regular series of advertising posters which he could complete fairly quickly and fit in alongside larger, more demanding projects. He found that these could also help to spread his reputation, with each design carrying his signature. Even the general public would start to recognise his style of work, which remained fairly consistent across these posters, even though each one tackled a different product. Food, drink and theatre would provide him with the most work, and other related themes included travel tours, with all of the companies involved tending to be focusing on attracting the middle classes in their respective regions. France provided him with the most opportunies but he also took on German companies at times as well. We can today analyse these paintings to find out more about life at that time, with printed advertising being seen by many as charming historical documents that reflect the culture of its time.

You will find Mucha's signature on a number of advertisements for other alcoholic drinks as well as chocolates and other sweets, as well as some baby food from Nestle too. He was inundated by commercial enterprises who wished to have their products linked to his name, as well as being able to sell more of their products through these effective poster designs. His own artistic brand suited these middle-class, aspirational products perfectly and even today these items provide a charming, classical display of how print advertising used to be used as a major tool for increasing sales. Eventually, things have slowly changed due to new technologies and most design work today is done digitally, in order to advertise products online or via television networks. The original idea of placing posters around a city feels an arduous task, and many would simply not notice these images when walking or driving past.

The Heidsieck & advert features three figures around a table enjoying some glasses of champagne. They are dressed glamorously, living a desirable type of lifestyle which all those who view these posters would want to be able to enjoy themselves. The artist uses areas on the top and bottom of the design in order to add various details around the product, but our main attention will always be afforded to the figurative portrait that sits in the middle. Mucha chooses to frame the main composition with a circular, ornate design and then fits several marks of authenticity on either side. Mucha was perfectly suited to promoting items such as luxury champagne and so was an obvious choice for the company to bring in.