Salon des Cent (1896) by Alphonse Mucha

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Salon des Cent: Mucha’s Poster for the Twentieth Exhibition

Alphonse Mucha’s Salon des Cent poster invites people into an art exhibition through an image of artistic making. A woman in profile occupies almost the whole sheet. Her hair falls in long dark curves; a soft drape crosses her head and shoulders; a brush and a goose quill rise beside her. Beneath the figure, the poster names the twentieth Salon des Cent exhibition, held in March–April 1896 at the Hall de la Plume in Paris. The lettering makes this an announcement for a particular event, while the figure and ornament make it an image people might want to keep looking at.^[1][2][3]

There is another Mucha poster for the Salon des Cent on this site. It announces Mucha’s own exhibition in June 1897, uses a different female figure and belongs to a different event. The shared exhibition name does not make the two prints interchangeable. This page concerns the 1896 twentieth exhibition.^[1][4]

At a Glance

• Workposter for the twentieth Salon des Cent exhibition^[1][2]
• Date and eventMarch–April 1896, Hall de la Plume, Paris^[1][2][3]
• Mediumcolour lithograph, printed by F. Champenois in Paris^[1][2]
• Size of catalogued impressionsMucha Foundation 63 × 43 cm; BnF 64 × 44 cm; Musée Carnavalet 63.3 × 43.2 cm for the work^[1][2][3]
• Text on the postertwentieth exhibition, Salon des Cent, March–April 1896, Hall de la Plume, 31 rue Bonaparte, Paris, and admission 0.50^[2][3]
• Local imagesinherited 400 × 588-pixel reproduction above; the close-reading details below derive from a separate high-resolution BnF scan of the 1896 design^[2]

Contents

1. An exhibition announced by a figure
2. The movement of hair, drape and outline
3. Lettering that locates the event
4. A second lettering state and another Salon commission
5. Why the 1897 Salon poster is different
6. Looking closely at the surviving design

An exhibition announced by a figure

The Salon des Cent was an exhibition setting associated with the journal La Plume. The Mucha Foundation identifies this sheet as the announcement for its twentieth exhibition at the journal’s premises and says the Salon brought together lithographs offered for sale by artists linked to the publication. Its account names Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Ensor and Grasset among the artists represented.^[1] Mucha’s poster therefore advertises a group exhibition. The woman is not presented as a named performer or the portrait of an identified participant. The invitation lies in her pose and the tools she carries, which make the act of art visible before the viewer reads the address.

A museum exhibition dossier gives a more specific account of the commission: poet and La Plume editor Léon Deschamps invited Mucha into the Salon's circle in 1896, and Mucha designed the twentieth-exhibition poster in appreciation.^[5] That account links the sheet to an artist-led exhibition programme begun in 1894. It does not turn the poster into an advertisement for a one-man Mucha show; that would come the following year. The poster's two tools fit a salon associated with both printed words and visual art, though the source does not identify a fixed allegorical name for the woman.

The portrait fills the upper part of a tall, narrow sheet. The woman turns left, away from a direct encounter with the viewer. A line of dark hair comes forward over her shoulder and forms a heavy counterweight to the light area of her face and upper body. The drape over her head creates another large curve. Those curves are easy to recognise from a distance, while the narrower marks of the brush, quill and lettering reward a nearer look. The composition moves between the scale of a public poster and the intimacy of a figure concentrating on something outside the frame.

Musée Carnavalet describes the woman as pensive and identifies the objects beside her as a brush and goose quill.^[3] The objects can point generally toward visual and written creation, fitting an exhibition organised through an illustrated journal. That relationship is a reading of the image, not proof that the figure represents a specific artist or that Mucha intended one fixed allegory. Nothing in the institutional records used here names a sitter. Keeping that distinction clear lets the visible poster do its own work.

The movement of hair, drape and outline

The figure is made from broad areas of pale colour held together by emphatic outlines. A dark contour follows her profile, then loses itself among the strands and loops of hair. The folds of the head drape make a lighter arc above the face. Mucha uses these shapes to guide the eye down the sheet: from the head and hand, through the overlapping implements and hair, toward the words announcing the exhibition. The decoration is not a separate border pasted around a portrait. It supplies the routes by which the portrait and the notice become one poster.

The Mucha Foundation singles out curved line, light tones, flat colour and strong outline in this work.^[1] These are useful observations because they describe what can be seen without assigning a hidden meaning to every curve. A flat area can hold its shape on a wall even when a viewer cannot resolve the print’s finer lines. Close up, those same lines add rhythm and variation to the hair and fabric. The result works at more than one viewing distance, a central practical problem for any poster that also hopes to be admired as a print.

The brush and quill are small beside the woman’s head, but they interrupt the softer flow of hair and fabric with straight, purposeful diagonals. In the larger BnF scan below, the junction of these objects and the figure is easier to inspect than in the inherited web image.^[2] The scan comes from another documented impression, so differences of colour or paper appearance between the two reproductions should not be treated as changes to one physical sheet. The point of the detail is to make the printed design readable, not to claim a perfect colour match.

Lettering that locates the event

The lower portion of the poster turns the image into a usable notice. Its large words identify the Salon des Cent, while smaller lines specify the twentieth exhibition and its March–April 1896 dates. The bottom lettering gives the Hall de la Plume, 31 rue Bonaparte, Paris, and an admission amount of 0.50.^[2][3] That is enough to identify an exhibition and its venue. The reproduced text does not supply a currency symbol, so it is safest to retain the amount as printed rather than add one.

The type is organised in bands of different size and density. The event name is broad and emphatic, and the practical information recedes toward the bottom. The order matters: first an intriguing image, then a name that can be read quickly, then the details a prospective visitor would need. Mucha’s image and lettering are therefore complementary. The poster can be admired for its line, yet its words tie it to a particular time and address. Removing them would change what kind of object it was.

The institution records give slightly different dimensions for their catalogued sheets. The Mucha Foundation lists 63 × 43 cm, the BnF 64 × 44 cm, and Musée Carnavalet 63.3 × 43.2 cm for the work in its collection.^[1][2][3] These are catalogued impressions, not competing measurements of the 400-pixel image on this page. Recording the source with the number is more helpful than pretending every surviving sheet has one exact size. All three records identify the same 1896 twentieth-exhibition design.

Two further holdings show why those numbers should remain attached to objects. Les Arts Décoratifs catalogues a 61.5 × 39.5 cm colour-lithograph sheet, commissioned by La Plume for posting in France, with a printed Mucha signature and Champenois printer line.^[6] The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg records a 63.6 × 43.2 cm sheet with a printed signature, the same printer identification and an additional “Affiches Illustrées Sagot” stamp.^[7] The stamp documents something about that held sheet's later circulation or handling; it should not replace Champenois as the recorded printer or be projected onto every impression.

A second lettering state and another Salon commission

A Japanese museum's 2026 bilingual worklist distinguishes two Salon des Cent / Vingtième Exposition lithographs dated 1896.^[9] It gives one at 642 × 421 mm and another at 640 × 434 mm, describing the latter as “Without One Part of Letters.” This is more specific evidence of variation than differing sheet measurements alone. The worklist does not transcribe which words are missing, show the order in which the two states were printed, or assign either entry to the reproduction at the top of this page. The full event text in the inherited image should therefore be described as that image's lettering, not as a feature of every impression made from the design.

Nor is a state with some lettering absent the same thing as the smaller Maîtres de l’Affiche collector plate. The Japanese entries are both about 64 cm tall and are catalogued as 1896 lithographs; the BnF identifies the collector plate as a Chaix print of approximately 40 cm height.^[8][9] These records separate a change in text within the poster format from a later reduction and republication. None supplies a print-run total. The similar sizes also cannot establish that all the museums' larger sheets belong to exactly the same lettering state; the descriptive catalogues have different levels of detail.

The Salon continued commissioning other artists' posters that year. The National Gallery of Art holds Pierre Bonnard's 1896 Salon des Cent colour lithograph. Its transcribed lettering announces the twenty-third exhibition in August–September 1896, again at 31 rue Bonaparte; its printer line names Chaix, rather than Mucha's Champenois.^[10] The two posters share an exhibition venue and year but advertise different numbered events and use different printers. This comparison makes the “twentieth” in Mucha's text a practical identifier, not merely decorative typography. It also shows why one cannot use another artist's Salon sheet to reconstruct missing words or production details on Mucha's partial-letter state.

Why the 1897 Salon poster is different

The Salon des Cent name appears on a later Mucha poster too. The Mucha Foundation catalogues a separate sheet for Mucha’s June 1897 exhibition. There the woman wears a Moravian bonnet and a wreath of daisies and holds a decorated panel.^[4] Those features are absent from the 1896 twentieth-exhibition design. The 1897 poster has a different occasion, figure and arrangement, even though English titles can make both sound like generic “Salon of the Hundred” posters.

The distinction is visible before the catalogue is consulted. On the 1896 sheet, loose dark hair, a draped headpiece and the brush and quill surround a left-facing profile. Its text identifies the twentieth exhibition in March and April. On the 1897 sheet, the bonnet, flowers and held panel signal another composition; the June exhibition was devoted to Mucha himself.^[1][4] If a reproduction loses the small print or is labelled only with the Salon’s name, those visual checks are a useful way to recover its identity. Readers can compare the 1897 Salon of the Hundred poster with this one without treating the two routes as aliases.

That difference also sharpens what this 1896 poster says about Mucha’s place in the Paris print world. The Foundation situates it among works for a group exhibition of artists associated with La Plume.^[1] The later sheet announces a solo showing. This is a documented difference in the exhibitions, not a claim about exactly how Mucha’s reputation changed from one month to another. What the two designs clearly demonstrate is his ability to give the same exhibition institution distinct identities for distinct occasions.

The 1896 design itself later entered a collector series. The BnF catalogues a Chaix-printed colour lithograph of it in Les Maîtres de l’Affiche, numbered plate 94, measuring 39.5 × 28 cm and bearing a dry stamp.^[8] That small portfolio sheet is neither the March–April street notice as first issued nor the same object as the BnF's larger Champenois print. A nineteenth-century collector reproduction can preserve Mucha's design while changing printer, size and use. It also makes the word “original” ambiguous unless the particular print and its issue are named.

The design had a further documented life as a historical poster. In the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers' catalogue for its July–August 1939 exhibition of colour posters, the Mucha section lists Le Salon des Cent (Vingtième Exposition), dated 1896, signed at lower left and printed by Champenois.^[11] The catalogue gives 61 × 40 cm for its listed sheet. This is a measurement in that exhibition record; it does not override the BnF, Hamburg or Japanese measurements or identify the local image's source impression. The inclusion establishes that curators were presenting the original exhibition advertisement as part of poster history more than four decades after the Salon it announced.

The 1939 exhibition's introduction addresses both technicians and the general public and describes colour posters as a meeting of artistic and industrial practice.^[11] It also says that objects in the exhibition were not for sale. Those stated aims differ from the 1896 Salon's promotion of works offered through La Plume. The same design could thus serve first as an invitation to an active exhibition and later as evidence in an educational account of printing and public communication. The catalogue documents that change of setting; it does not tell us how many people saw the sheet in either setting.

An Osaka museum's later Toulouse-Lautrec and Mucha exhibition placed the 1896 twentieth-exhibition poster within a chapter about their activity around the Salon des Cent.^[12] Its text calls the Salon the artists' most likely point of contact during 1895–97. That phrasing matters: it offers an institutional context for two careers, but does not document a meeting or prove that both artists participated in the March–April twentieth exhibition. The poster can illustrate the shared print culture without being made to carry an unsupported encounter story.

Looking closely at the surviving design

The annotated image below comes from a BnF scan catalogued with the March–April 1896 twentieth exhibition.^[2] Its 5,432 × 8,271 pixels allow the portrait, implements and lower lettering to be shown separately without enlarging the inherited 400-pixel JPEG beyond its useful detail. The overview marks three places to examine. Each enlargement is a crop from that documented scan. The BnF image is a separate impression from the inherited web reproduction above; its tones and margins need not match exactly.

Look first at how the curve of the drape and hair frames the profile. Then follow the brush and quill down toward the hand and the beginning of the printed notice. Finally, read the event information at the bottom. The closer view shows why it is misleading to describe this as a performer portrait or a generic Art Nouveau image. The sheet has an actual exhibition to announce, and its figure, tools and words work together to make that announcement compelling.

The design can also be compared with Mucha’s Gismonda and JOB, where a dominant figure and rhythmic line serve different public messages. The Salon poster’s particular balance is between art making and exhibition information. Its title might travel easily between languages, but its printed date and venue anchor it to one event. Reading those details preserves the specificity of a work that can otherwise disappear into the broad label of “Mucha poster.”

Look closer: the 1896 exhibition poster

These details come directly from a BnF scan of the twentieth-exhibition poster. It records a separate impression from the inherited image above.

1 2 3

Details from the 1896 exhibition poster

Select a detail image to open the full-size gallery, then use the arrows to compare views.

1

A profile framed by curves

The drape crosses the dark hair and frames the face. The Foundation highlights curved line, flat colour and strong outline in this design.^[1]

2

Brush and quill

Musée Carnavalet identifies the two implements as a brush and goose quill. They make artistic work part of the invitation without naming a sitter.^[3]

3

The event in print

The lower lettering fixes the event to March–April 1896 and gives the Hall de la Plume address and admission amount.^[2][3]

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, Poster for 'Salon des Cent 20th Exhibition', object 43; 1896 group-exhibition context, medium, printer, dimensions and design description. Foundation object record.
2. Bibliothèque nationale de France, notice FRBNF40461180, twentieth Salon des Cent exhibition poster, March–April 1896, with Gallica scan ark:/12148/btv1b90051629. BnF catalogue notice.
3. Musée Carnavalet / Paris Musées, object AFF2491, 1896 poster; dimensions, brush and goose quill, venue and admission lettering. Museum object record.
4. Mucha Foundation, Poster for 'Salon des Cent Mucha Exhibition June 1897', object 88; a distinct solo-exhibition poster and image. Foundation object record.
5. Musée départemental breton / Mucha Foundation, Alphonse Mucha: La Beauté Art nouveau exhibition dossier, pp. 7–8, on Léon Deschamps, the Salon and Mucha's 1896 invitation.
6. Les Arts Décoratifs, 1896 Salon des Cent poster, inventory 12281.1; commission, printing, inscriptions and 61.5 × 39.5 cm sheet.
7. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, 1896 Salon des Cent poster, E1897.99; medium, dimensions, printer line and Sagot stamp.
8. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Les Maîtres de l’Affiche, plate 94; Chaix colour lithograph, 39.5 × 28 cm, with dry stamp.
9. Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum, 2026 bilingual Toulouse-Lautrec and Mucha worklist, entries 064–065, p. 2; two 1896 twentieth-exhibition lithographs, one catalogued with part of the lettering absent. Museum worklist, PDF.
10. National Gallery of Art, Pierre Bonnard, Poster for “Salon des cent”, 1896, accession 1999.138.5; inscriptions identifying the twenty-third exhibition, August–September dates, address and Chaix printer.
11. Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Exposition de l'affiche en couleurs de Chéret à nos jours, July–August 1939 catalogue, Mucha entry for the twentieth Salon exhibition; 61 × 40 cm and Champenois credit.
12. Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, Toulouse-Lautrec and Mucha: Ten Years in Paris, 2022–23 exhibition chapter on 1895–97 Salon des Cent activity; identifies Mucha's 1896 twentieth-exhibition poster and qualifies the Salon as the artists' most likely point of contact.

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