Lance Parfum Rodo

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Lance Parfum Rodo by Alphonse Mucha

A woman demonstrates a small perfume sprayer beneath the name Lance Parfum Rodo. The Mucha Foundation identifies the product's maker as the Société des Usines Chimiques du Rhône in Lyon and dates its catalogued colour lithograph to 1896.^[1] A separate surviving drawing and museum-held prints show that this was a designed campaign object with a material history, not simply a decorative portrait. The Albertina gives its impression a broader date of about 1900, a difference the available records do not yet explain.^[5][7]

At a Glance

• Date1896 in Foundation, Salce and Hammer records; German version deposited 1897; c. 1900 at the Albertina^{[1][4][5][6][10]}
• Mediumcolour lithograph
• Catalogued sheet44.5 × 32 cm in the Mucha Foundation record^[1]
• ProductRodo spray perfume^[3]
• MakerSociété des Usines Chimiques du Rhône, Lyon^[1]

Contents

1. Demonstrating a new kind of perfume
2. From drawing to printed advertisement
3. Printers, impressions and dates
4. A practical reading of the design

Demonstrating a new kind of perfume

The advertisement places the product in use. The Italian national catalogue's description of a held impression identifies a woman directing a perfume spray toward a handkerchief.^[4] That is more informative than calling the object merely a vial: the gesture shows how the fragrance is dispensed. The large printed name tells the viewer what she is using, while the smaller hand-held device gives the claim a concrete form.

The Foundation's exhibition dossier describes Rodo as a new spray-bottle perfume and says Mucha made graphics for the product and its packaging as well as the poster.^[8] This expands the commission's scope. A customer could meet a related design on the advertised container, not only on a wall. The 2022 Osaka exhibition work list separately catalogues a lithographic poster and glass Rodo packages, which supports treating packages as objects with their own materials and measurements.^[9]

A bilingual Brazilian exhibition catalogue supplies a particularly tangible example: a plywood box with a label, containing six glass phials filled with perfume. It dates the set to about 1896 and gives the box's dimensions as 18 × 19 × 4 centimetres.^[11] This is evidence of a packaged commercial object, not merely an artist's proposal for one. The same catalogue says the poster design was used for a label and the perfume case.^[11] It does not establish whether every surviving Rodo package has identical contents or dimensions. The package and the sheet should therefore retain their separate catalogue identities.

The poster's visual hierarchy is unusually direct. Curves of hair and dress gather around the demonstrator, but the held sprayer and the name keep the commodity present. Compared with Mucha's much taller Gismonda theatre poster, the Foundation's Rodo sheet is compact: 44.5 × 32 centimetres in that record.^[1][2] The comparison describes different communication jobs. Gismonda announces a performer and play; Rodo needs the name and the act of applying perfume to register together.

From drawing to printed advertisement

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston holds a distinct 1896 study for the Rodo poster, made in black chalk and brush and ink on wove paper.^[7] It measures 44.1 × 32 centimetres, but that closeness to the Foundation's poster measurement does not make the drawing a lithograph or a printing proof. The Houston record calls it a preparatory study. Its existence gives readers a firmer account of the design process: at least one hand-worked sheet preceded or accompanied the printed advertisement. The catalogue does not establish the exact sequence of revisions or which poster details were already settled in the study.

A second catalogued Rodo study makes the preparation more substantial than a single surviving drawing. The Brazilian exhibition catalogue reproduces a 1896 study in ink, watercolour, gouache and gold on paper, measuring 48.4 × 35.2 centimetres.^[11] Its media and measurements differ from the Houston black-chalk-and-ink sheet, so the records appear to describe distinct preparatory objects. Neither catalogue supplies a complete chronology between them; calling one a first idea and the other a final design would go beyond the evidence. Their different materials do show that the poster was worked through in more than one graphic mode before or alongside printing.

The Houston museum acquired its drawing in 2020 after a recorded passage through a French gallery sale, a London private collection and a dealer. That provenance tracks that drawing, not the other study or the poster edition.^[7] It is useful precisely because works connected by a design can have very different physical histories. The studies, lithographic poster and glass packages should not be collapsed into one artefact.

Printers, impressions and dates

The Foundation dates its colour lithograph to 1896 and names the Lyon chemical works as the perfume maker, but its particular object entry does not supply a printer.^[1] Other institutions do add evidence about their held sheets. The Albertina catalogues a colour lithograph printed by F. Champenois, Paris, and transcribes the printer's Boulevard Saint-Michel address from that impression.^[5] The Hammer Museum catalogues another 1896 colour lithograph, 44.5 × 32.1 centimetres, with Mucha's signature printed in the stone.^[6] The Italian Salce Collection records a 1896 chromolithograph measuring 45.7 × 32.8 centimetres, with backing materials included in its object description.^[4] These are individual collection measurements, not a single universal poster size.

The Albertina dates its held print about 1900; the Foundation, Hammer and Salce records use 1896.^[1][4][5][6] The Albertina does not say in the accessible entry whether its approximation describes a later impression, an uncertain publication date or a different judgment about the design. For that reason, the earlier year remains the principal date for the work in this article, with the Albertina's record stated openly rather than silently harmonised.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France catalogues a German-language version as a Champenois colour lithograph measuring 44 × 32 centimetres. Its notice gives 1897 as the legal-deposit year and identifies the sheet as variant 1 in Rennert and Weill's Mucha poster catalogue.^[10] The transcribed German wording claims that Rodo refreshes without wetting or staining. That is a product claim on this particular language version, not proof of the exact wording on every impression. The BnF's deposit date documents that version's registration; it does not require moving the design date from 1896 to 1897.

The brand also left a paper trail beyond art catalogues. A 1908 report in the international industrial-property journal, preserved by the World Intellectual Property Organization, recounts French deposits for Lance Parfum Rodo on 7 and 30 July 1897 and international registrations on 5 and 9 August 1897, numbered 1100 and 1105.^[12] The report concerns a later dispute over the mark, so these are retrospective legal facts about the product name, not direct evidence of the poster's printing run. Alongside the BnF notice, they help show why the 1896 artwork can coexist with 1897 administrative dates without treating any of them as a mistake.

A practical reading of the design

Read the brand name, then the demonstrator's hand and the handkerchief described by the Salce catalogue. The advertisement does not rely on ornament alone: it makes a specific action and a specific product remember one another.^[4] The German variant and surviving six-phial box show the message crossing both language and format. The two studies and museum prints preserve further stages of the campaign, each with its own date and material record.^[7][10][11]

Watch: Alphonse Mucha

See how Mucha’s commercial design grew from the same Paris visual language as his theatre posters.

Alphonse Mucha: Plongez dans l’Art nouveau !

Grand Palais

A French museum introduction to Mucha’s Art Nouveau years, poster work and decorative language.

Watch on YouTube

▶01 · Art Nouveau overviewAlphonse Mucha: Plongez dans l’Art nouveau !Grand Palais▶02 · Paris and designAlphonse Mucha: Art Nouveau in ParijsKunstmuseum Den Haag▶03 · GismondaAlfons Mucha: GismondaCzech Centre London

Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Mucha Foundation, “Lance Parfum Rodo (1896),” object record. View source.
2. Mucha Foundation, “Poster for ‘Gismonda’ (1894),” comparison object. View source.
3. Mucha Foundation, “Advertising Posters,” thematic collection. View source.
4. Italian national heritage catalogue, Museo nazionale Collezione Salce, inventory 08761. Object record.
5. Albertina, Lance Parfum Rodo, DG2003/970, German catalogue record. Object record.
6. Hammer Museum, Grunwald Center 2001.36.4. Object record.
7. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Study for an Advertising Poster: Lance Parfum “Rodo”, 2020.65. Object record.
8. Mucha Foundation, Modernity: Mucha and the Genesis of Advertising, exhibition dossier, item 49. Catalogue.
9. Osaka Nakanoshima Museum of Art, 2022 exhibition work list, poster and Rodo packaging entries. Work list.
10. Bibliothèque nationale de France, German-language Lance parfum “Rodo”, legal deposit 1897, variant 1. Object record.
11. Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Mucha: The Legacy of Art Nouveau, bilingual Portuguese-English exhibition catalogue, Rodo study and six-phial package entries. Catalogue.
12. Bureau international de l'Union pour la protection de la propriété industrielle, La Propriété industrielle, January 1908, Rodo trademark dispute and registration dates, digitised by WIPO. Journal.

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