Spirit of Spring

Spirit of Spring delivers an allegorical theme relatively early in the career of Alphonse Mucha. This piece is dated at 1894 and now resides in a private collection, with little more known about it.

Here we find three women relaxing in a garden setting, enjoying the bright colours of blossoming flowers which connects immediately to the title of the piece. The overall style is very traditional, both in content and also the techniques used to put the composition together. It would be later that Mucha would develop his poster style for which he would become much better known and those would take many elements found here within Spirit of Spring but repurpose them into something which felt a little more contemporary. That said, this is still a delightful piece which is likely to have been purchased privately fairly soon after the artist had completed it. There also may well have been a number of study drawings and paintings prior to the execution of this artwork, because of the complexity of it which would have made it hard to master right from the off.

Aside from the three main figures, there is a wealth of information found in this painting. A small pond lays close to us, partially covered by some foliage that appears from the bottom left corner. There is then a tall tree which stands behind the women, offering them some shelter from the items outside of the garden, as well as vertically structuring the composition. The girls holds several bouquets of flowers which provides the freshness as well as brightening the palette with tones of white, pink and green for the stems. There are some small touches of architecture behind the tree which perhaps marks the edge of the garden. Behind these is a landscape scene featuring some tall buildings in the far distance which would probably have been religion based at this point in European history.

Mucha eventually moved on somewhat from this style of painting as his career developed and provided flatter, simpler designs which could be used as commercial posters. That became his clear signature style and gave the artist a solid income for several decades. There was also a unique element to that approach, where as the style of Spirit of Spring is relatively classical, and the content not particularly innovative. It is a perfectly good artwork which displays the artist's handling of colour and portraiture but does not push the boundaries of artistic expression in new ways. He became bolder and more ambitious as his career developed, perhaps benefiting from the financial freedom that was afforded to him after producing posters successfully for a number of years.