Emile Gebhart; Alphonse Mucha
Paris: F. Champenois & H. Piazza et Cie, 1900.

Copy No. 1 of 10 on Japon containing an original Mucha drawing. Emile Gebhart’s three medieval tales: Les trois rois, La derniere nuit de Judas, and Alleluia! presented in one of the great illustrated books of the Art Nouveau period. Alphonse Mucha provided the complete decorative programme: cover design, title-page decoration, limitation page, colophon, and 78 individual headpiece compositions with elaborate floral borders enclosing the text, each hand-coloured by au pochoir. This copy, No. 1, contains an original full-page mixed-media drawing in pencil and watercolour on Japon, signed ‘Mucha’ at lower right, depicting a young woman in flowing drapery and broad knotted sash, her hair loose to her waist beneath a patterned headband, in profile with her hands raised to her collarbone, a detailed study for the main figure featured in the vignette on page 69. Also bound in are a complete suite in colour on Japon of the 78 borders and vignettes and the three designs for the title, limitation, and colophon, together with a second state in black on China paper. The original wrappers and prospectus are retained. The prospectus established a hierarchy of 252 copies in five categories, of which the ten copies on Japon with original watercolours (priced at 550 francs each) ranked only below the unique parchment and satin copies (priced at 1,000 and 800 francs), both entirely reworked by the artist, and above 25 further copies on Japon without watercolour and 215 copies on velin de Rives. The prospectus also noted explicitly that trade discount on the watercolour copies excluded “the cost of the watercolour executed by the artist”, formally distinguishing the value of the Mucha original from that of the book at the point of publication. Provenance: Acquired in 1947 by Albert Quesnot (1882-1954), first violinist with the Paris Opera, thence by descent, retained in the family home until 2026, when acquired at auction in Paris. Fresh to the market after nearly eighty years of unbroken family ownership.