Médée

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Médée by Alphonse Mucha: Sarah Bernhardt in a Tragic Role

Sarah Bernhardt stands almost the full height of Alphonse Mucha’s poster for Médée. She looks outward with wide eyes, a blade in her lowered hand. Two children lie beneath her. Above, the play’s name fills a broad band; at the right, the actress’s name runs down the sheet. A passer-by could read the essential facts—title, theatre and star—before confronting the image at the centre. Mucha made this 1898 colour lithograph to advertise Bernhardt’s performance at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris.^[1][2]

It is one of the darkest images in their collaboration. Mucha retains the tall format and commanding single figure familiar from his earlier Bernhardt posters, but the stillness here feels charged by what has happened. The poster gives the tragic role a strong public image while leaving the performance itself to the stage.^[1][3]

At a Glance

• ArtistAlphonse Mucha
• TitlePoster for Médée
• Date1898
• Mediumcolour lithograph
• PrinterF. Champenois, Paris
• SubjectSarah Bernhardt as Medea, for the Théâtre de la Renaissance^[1][2]

Contents

1. A theatre poster that tells us where to look
2. Bernhardt as Medea
3. A separate charcoal design
4. The serpent on her arm
5. Within the Bernhardt sequence

A theatre poster that tells us where to look

The sheet announces itself in stages. MÉDÉE is set across the top in large letters. A narrower band below names the Théâtre de la Renaissance. Then the picture takes over: Bernhardt appears before a bright circular field, framed by a shallow arch and a stylised landscape. Her body descends through most of the poster. SARAH BERNHARDT runs vertically at her side, using the long white margin to make the star’s name part of the composition.^[1][2]

This arrangement had a practical job. The title and theatre had to be legible in a street setting; Bernhardt’s presence had to be recognised as the reason to stop and look. Mucha did not put the words on a separate placard below an illustration. The square title band, upright name and narrow body of the image divide one tall sheet into a sequence of encounters. Seen quickly, it is an advertisement. Seen closely, its letters, frame and figure work as one design.

The Foundation places Médée among the posters Mucha made for Bernhardt after Gismonda, the work that began their Paris collaboration. The long, narrow figure and a shallow architectural frame remain recognisable devices. Yet the effect is different. Gismonda presents a poised actress in richly patterned costume; Médée puts the figure under the pressure of tragedy. Continuity of format lets Mucha change the mood without losing the clear identity of a Bernhardt poster.^[3]

Bernhardt as Medea

The poster was made for a contemporary Paris production of the Greek tragedy adapted by Catulle Mendès. In the story as summarised by the Mucha Foundation, Medea learns of her husband Jason’s infidelity and kills their two children. Bernhardt played Medea, while Mucha designed her public image for the production. The distinction matters: the person we see is the actress in a dramatic role, not a portrait of the mythological character independent of the theatre.^[1]

The Bibliothèque nationale de France's production record, based on a programme in the Rondel collection, dates the first performance to 28 October 1898 at the Théâtre de la Renaissance. It calls Mendès's work a three-act tragedy and names Albert Darmont as Jason and Blanche Dufrêne as Callidice alongside Bernhardt.^[7] These details attach Mucha's poster to a particular new play and cast. They also keep it apart from later versions of the Medea story: the title by itself could refer to many dramas, but the sheet's theatre and star identify this Paris staging.

The same programme-based record credits Vincent d'Indy with music for the production.^[7] The Palazzetto Bru Zane music archive explains that d'Indy later reworked his stage score into an orchestral suite, Op. 47; the premiere's musical performance had suffered from poor conditions, while the suite was received more warmly the following spring.^[8] That later concert work is a distinct afterlife of the 1898 play, just as Mucha's poster is a distinct surviving part of its publicity. The printed figure tells us about the advertised drama, but not what the audience heard in the theatre.

Mendès's version had a life on stage beyond Bernhardt's Renaissance production. A later Comédie-Française programme traces its own 1903 staging back to the 1898 creation and names Eugénie Segond-Weber as the actress who succeeded Bernhardt in the title role.^[15] The BnF catalogues both an 1898 printed text and a 1903 edition associated with the two stagings.^[16] These are records of the play's later circulation, not evidence that Mucha's 1898 poster advertised the Comédie-Française cast. The difference matters because a title such as Médée may survive through new actors, venues and editions after the occasion for which a particular poster was made.

The Centre national du costume de scène provides a material example of that continuing stage history. Its collection guide lists a costume designed by Désiré Chaineux for a guard of Aegeus in Médée, on deposit from the Comédie-Française.^[19] The guide distinguishes the play's 1898 Renaissance creation from the 1903 Comédie-Française production and labels the costume 1903. It is therefore a later stage object, not a surviving costume worn by Bernhardt in the premiere and not evidence that Mucha designed this guard's clothing. Together with the 1903 programme, it shows how a play advertised by one celebrated poster could be restaged with a new cast and its own material record.^[15][19]

Mucha gives the face an unusually tense focus. Bernhardt’s eyes are wide and fixed; the dark folds around her head and shoulders pull attention toward them. Her raised arm crosses the body, while the other hand holds the blade down toward the children. The gesture creates a line from the upper figure to the lower scene. There is no need to assign an exact instant of the play or a private thought to the actress. The visible action and the Foundation’s account provide enough to understand the poster’s tragic subject.^[1]

The children occupy the lower edge rather than the centre. They are impossible to ignore once noticed, but they do not displace Bernhardt’s figure. The poster asks the eye to travel down through her dark robe and the knife to the consequence below. The title at the top and the bodies at the foot give the vertical sheet a narrative direction. What might first seem like a decorative portrait becomes a grim theatrical image.

What a first-week spectator described

The critic Francisque Sarcey reviewed the new production in Le Temps on 31 October 1898, three days after the BnF's recorded première.^[12][7] He wrote that the first night had succeeded, but openly wondered whether the play would have lasting popular success. That is a contemporary reaction to one performance, not a verdict on the poster or the whole run. Sarcey found the third act especially effective in staging. In his account, Medea gives the children a poisoned wedding gift for Jason's new bride; later she takes them into Hecate's temple, where their cries are heard before the doors reveal their bodies.^[12]

This report helps distinguish Mucha's compressed printed drama from the unfolding stage action. The poster puts Bernhardt, blade and children together in one vertical image. Sarcey's review describes a sequence of waiting, offstage sound and revelation. It would be too precise to call the poster an illustration of a single documented second of that performance. Mucha instead made its tragic outcome immediately legible to someone on the street, while the production made an audience wait for it.^[1][12]

Sarcey's response to Bernhardt was mixed. He admired the role's capacity for both tenderness and fury and her force in playing it, but wished for more quiet gradations in her delivery.^[12] Such criticism belongs to an individual reviewer and a particular Paris opening week. It reminds us that the poster's fixed, wide-eyed Bernhardt was only one public version of a performance audiences could judge differently in the theatre. The review discusses the play and acting; it does not state that Sarcey saw or evaluated Mucha's sheet.

The opening-night response and the play's later fortunes need separate evidence. In an 1899 biography of Bernhardt, journalist Jules Huret called Médée a failure despite her efforts and said disappointing receipts led her to return to La Dame aux Camélias.^[13] This is a near-contemporary retrospective account, not a surviving box-office ledger. Sarcey's report that the première succeeded can coexist with Huret's account of weak receipts over the following performances: they describe different spans and kinds of success.^[12][13] Together they caution against reading the poster's enduring fame as proof that Mendès's play enjoyed a long or profitable initial run.

Colour sharpens that direction. A warm circular field glows behind Bernhardt’s head, while much of her costume is dark. Pale areas around her and near the children open spaces of contrast within the tall format. The Foundation notes a stylised landscape in the background and connects it to the period’s interest in Japanese art. Rather than reconstructing a literal stage set, Mucha uses simplified forms and flat colour to make a scene that can register from a distance.^[1]

A separate charcoal design

French national collection records preserve a large 1898 charcoal-on-paper study titled Sarah Bernhard en Médée, inventory RF 39759. The Musée d'Orsay gives its size as 181 × 69.1 centimetres; the French cultural heritage database adds that it was drawn on two sheets joined together and classifies it as a poster project.^[5][6] This is a working drawing, not another lithographic impression. Its dimensions therefore should not be inserted into the printed-poster size list.

The study makes the production process visible in the written record even without placing a new reproduction on this page. Mucha worked at a scale already approaching the street poster before Champenois printed the colour design. The heritage record ties the drawing expressly to Mendès's three-act play and its 28 October Renaissance performance.^[6] Its earliest recorded museum entry is 1936, long after the premiere, which speaks to the design's later preservation rather than the date of the performance.^[5][6]

The Louvre's own object notice makes the collection history more precise. It says the drawing entered the Jeu de Paume in 1936, was transferred from the Musée d'Art Moderne to the Louvre in 1977, and is listed under the Louvre's prints-and-drawings department within a Musée d'Orsay drawings collection fund. Its recorded location is the Louvre's reserve for framed works, with consultation by appointment.^[11] Orsay's website separately labels the same inventory RF 39759 as conserved at the Musée d'Orsay, and the national POP database lists the Louvre's arts graphiques department.^[5][6] Those interfaces mix collection attribution and location differently. The Louvre's dated object notice clarifies the historical transfer, but a text-only comparison cannot establish where the sheet physically sits today. None of the location labels changes its identity as a drawing rather than a printed poster.^[5][6][11]

The serpent on her arm

A serpent-shaped ornament coils around Medea’s arm and hand. It is a small detail beside the poster’s title and figures, but it changes the look of her gesture. The curve travels with the arm, drawing the eye toward the hand and blade. An ornament that might have been merely part of a costume becomes a strong graphic line within the whole image.^[1]

The design also passed beyond the poster. The Mucha Foundation identifies this pictured serpent as the prototype for a snake bracelet that Bernhardt commissioned from the jeweller Georges Fouquet. Its catalogue dates the surviving Snake Bracelet with a Ring to 1899 and lists gold, enamel, opal, ruby and diamond among its materials. The bracelet is a later physical object. We should not imagine that the finished 1899 jewel was already on Bernhardt’s arm when the 1898 poster was printed.^[1][4]

The Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim independently recounts the surviving bracelet-and-ring's making at Fouquet's workshop in 1899 and its later passage through a private collection.^[10] That testimony strengthens the distinction between the drawn serpent and the physical jewel: the paper design could be printed repeatedly, while the commissioned object was made for a particular wearer. It also shows why a detail from a theatre poster mattered beyond advertising. Bernhardt's role helped carry Mucha's ornament from a public street image into jewellery design.

The jewellery's later route can now be followed more closely than a generic “private collection” label suggests. Fritz Falk, the former Pforzheim museum director, recalls seeing the piece with Paris dealer Michel Périnet in 1975, then at New York dealer Fred Leighton in 1985. He describes his museum's unsuccessful attempt to acquire it and a 1987 Geneva sale to a telephone bidder. By 2003 he saw it in a Japanese Mucha collection; he says that collection subsequently became the property of Sakai City.^[10] This is Falk's firsthand account of encounters and negotiations, not a complete chain of legal ownership documents. It nevertheless explains how the jewel moved from a European private market to a Japanese public collection.

Two Japanese museum records confirm the present institutional connection. Sakai's own 2012 newsletter says it lent the bracelet and ring to Pforzheim's 2011–12 “Serpentina” exhibition.^[17] A later Sakai publication lists the 1899 work among its holdings and identifies gold, enamel, opal and diamond.^[18] The Foundation's catalogue also lists ruby, so the materials lists are not identical.^[4][18] None of these records proves exactly when Bernhardt first wore the finished object on stage. They establish a more modest sequence: serpent design on a 1898 poster, Fouquet's 1899 jewel, and its documented later collection and loan history.^{[1][4][10][17][18]}

That chronology shows how a theatrical image could generate another kind of work. Mucha drew a shape that strengthened the actress’s appearance in a poster; Fouquet then made jewellery from the idea for a living wearer. The transition required a maker’s craft, materials and movement at the scale of a wrist and hand. It also reflects Bernhardt’s part in the story: the Foundation records her commission of the later object, rather than presenting the bracelet as an unrelated studio exercise.^[1][4]

Within the Bernhardt sequence

Mucha’s posters for Bernhardt were linked by a continuing need to advertise a star and a production, but each role called for its own tone. The Foundation lists Médée after La Dame aux Camélias and La Samaritaine, and before La Tosca and Hamlet. Reading the series together makes Médée’s severity easier to see. Its dark drapery, alarmed gaze and children below put tragic action into the public space of a poster.^[3]

The image does not simply illustrate a famous myth. It names a specific theatre and a specific performer. Bernhardt’s name is given conspicuous space; the blade and children signal the dramatic stakes; the title makes the advertised production unmistakable. These parts explain why Médée belongs both to Mucha’s poster art and to Bernhardt’s stage career. The print is a surviving design for an event, and its letters remain as important to its identity as the figure.^[1][2]

From theatre publicity to design collection

The Museum of Modern Art's held Médée gives this afterlife a dated example. Its record identifies the poster as a gift from Joseph H. Heil, assigns it object number 2280.1967, and places it in the museum's Architecture and Design department.^[9] The accession number belongs to its later museum record; MoMA continues to date the design 1898. It describes the object as a lithograph printed by Champenois for Bernhardt at the Renaissance, preserving its first purpose alongside its later status as a collected work.^[9]

MoMA's exhibition history identifies this impression in installation records for “Word and Image: Posters and Typography” in 1968, a 1978 collection selection, and “Designing Modern Women 1890–1990” in 2013–14.^[9] Those contexts frame the same sheet in different ways: as an example of poster lettering and graphic design, as part of a permanent collection, and within a history of design and women. They document later institutional readings rather than a continuous public display or a contemporary verdict on the 1898 production. MoMA notes that its identifications in historical installation photographs have involved later machine and staff review; the exhibition associations should therefore be read as catalogue evidence rather than a complete loan history.^[9]

It also reveals the range within Mucha’s theatre work. The same narrow format that could make a performer appear serene could hold a scene of violence and distress. He built the poster around a composed figure, yet he allowed the role to alter her gaze, posture and surroundings. The result is immediately readable from its title and actress’s name, then more unsettling as the eye reaches the children at the bottom.

For the beginning of the collaboration, see Gismonda. The wider poster collection places Médée among Mucha’s other printed commissions, while Mucha’s biography follows his work with Bernhardt through his Paris career.^[3]

Watch: Alphonse Mucha

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A National Gallery Prague highlight centred on the breakthrough Sarah Bernhardt poster.

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Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Mucha Foundation, “Poster for Médée,” object record, 1898. View source.
2. Bibliothèque nationale de France, “Médée. Théâtre de La Renaissance. Sarah Bernhardt,” notice FRBNF40461535. View source.
3. Mucha Foundation, “Sarah Bernhardt,” thematic collection and poster chronology. View source.
4. Mucha Foundation, “Snake Bracelet with a Ring,” object record, 1899. View source.
5. Musée d'Orsay, Sarah Bernhard en Médée, inventory RF 39759, a separate 1898 charcoal study measuring 181 × 69.1 cm. View source.
6. French Ministry of Culture, POP/Joconde, “Projet d'affiche: Sarah Bernhardt en Médée,” inventory RF 39759, two joined sheets and production association. View source.
7. Bibliothèque nationale de France, programme-based Médée production notice FRBNF39460018, premiere date, three-act form, cast and Vincent d'Indy's music. View source.
8. Palazzetto Bru Zane Mediabase, “Médée,” history of d'Indy's stage music and later Op. 47 suite. View source.
9. Museum of Modern Art, Medée (Medea), object 2280.1967, a Champenois lithograph measuring 206.4 × 76.2 cm. View source.
10. Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim, account of Bernhardt's snake bracelet and the 1899 Fouquet workshop object. View source.
11. Musée du Louvre, Département des Arts graphiques, direct notice for Projet d'affiche: Sarah Bernhard en Médée, RF 39759; 1936 Jeu de Paume entry, 1977 transfer, Orsay collection fund and recorded Louvre reserve location. Object record.
12. Francisque Sarcey, theatrical review of Catulle Mendès's Médée, Le Temps, 31 October 1898, discussing its first-night reception, third-act staging and Bernhardt's performance. Digitised newspaper.
13. Jules Huret, Sarah Bernhardt, English translation by G. A. Raper (London, 1899), account of Médée's poor receipts and the return to La Dame aux Camélias. Read digitised book.
14. Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris, Médée. Théâtre de la Renaissance. Sarah Bernhardt, inventory 11148.2, sheet and mounted dimensions, inscriptions and Roger Braun bequest. Collection record.
15. Comédie-Française, 2023 Médée programme, “Médée et ses avatars,” p. 27, identifying the 1903 Mendès staging after Bernhardt's 1898 production. Read programme.
16. Bibliothèque nationale de France, linked records for Mendès's 1898 and 1903 printed Médée editions and stage productions. Catalogue group.
17. Sakai Alphonse Mucha Museum, Japanese newsletter, 9 March 2012, record of the bracelet's loan to Pforzheim's 2011–12 “Serpentina” exhibition. Read newsletter.
18. Sakai Alphonse Mucha Museum, Japanese museum newsletter, collection listing for the 1899 Snake Bracelet with a Ring. Read newsletter.
19. Centre national du costume de scène, collection guide, pp. 12–13, Désiré Chaineux's 1903 costume for a guard of Aegeus in Mendès's Médée. Read guide.
20. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Médée, EP2014.2049, 1898 Champenois lithograph catalogued as printed in two parts with a 103.5 × 76.5 cm overall measure. Collection record.

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