Editing Alphonse Mucha (section)

==Commercial art and posters==
The success of the Bernhardt posters brought Mucha commissions for advertising posters. He designed [[JOB Collection|posters for JOB cigarette papers]], Ruinart Champagne,  Lefèvre-Utile biscuits, Nestlé baby food, Idéal Chocolate, the Beers of the Meuse, Moët-Chandon champagne, Trappestine brandy, and Waverly and Perfect bicycles.{{Sfn|Sato|2015|pages=26–36}} With Champenois, he also created a new kind of product, a decorative panel, a poster without text, purely for decoration. They were published in large print runs for a modest price. The first series was ''[[The Seasons (Mucha)|The Seasons]]'', published in 1896, depicting four different women in extremely decorative floral settings representing the seasons of the year. In 1897 he produced an individual decorative panel of a young woman in a floral setting, called ''Reverie'', for Champenois.  He also designed a calendar with a woman's head surrounded by the signs of the zodiac. The rights were resold to [[Léon Deschamps]], the editor of the arts review ''La Plume'', who brought it out with great success in 1897. ''The Seasons'' series was followed by ''The Flowers'', ''The Arts'' (1898), ''The Times of Day'' (1899), ''Precious Stones'' (1900), and ''The Moon and the Stars'' (1902).{{Sfn|Thiébaut|2018|pages=74–77}}  Between 1896 and 1904 Mucha created over one hundred poster designs for Champenois.  These were sold in various formats, ranging from expensive versions printed on Japanese paper or vellum, to less expensive versions which combined multiple images, to calendars and postcards.{{Sfn|Sato|2015|page=43}}

His posters focused almost entirely on beautiful women in lavish settings with their hair usually curling in arabesque forms and filling the frame.  His poster for the railway line between Paris and Monaco-Monte-Carlo (1897) did not show a train or any identifiable scene of Monaco or Monte-Carlo; it showed a beautiful young woman in a kind of reverie, surrounded by swirling floral images, which suggested the turning wheels of a train.{{Sfn|Thiébaut|2018|page=1897}}

The fame of his posters led to success in the art world; he was invited by Deschamps to show his work in the ''Salon des Cent'' exhibition in 1896, and then, in 1897, to have a major retrospective in the same gallery showing 448 works. The magazine ''La Plume'' made a special edition devoted to his work, and his exhibition traveled to Vienna, Prague, Munich, Brussels, London, and New York, giving him an international reputation.{{Sfn|Sato|2015|page=46}}

<gallery mode="packed" heights="200px">
File:Alfons Mucha - Monaco Monte Carlo.jpg|Railroad poster advertising travel to Monaco and Monte-Carlo  (1897)
File:Alphonse Mucha - Zodiac, 1869.jpg|Zodiac calendar for ''La Plume'' (1897)
File:Alphonse Mucha - Job Cigarettes 1.jpg|[[JOB Collection|Poster for JOB]] cigarette papers (1898)
File:La Plume 1898.jpg|Cover design for the magazine ''La Plume'' (1898)
File:Mucha-Moët & Chandon Crémant Impérial-1899.jpg|''Moët & Chandon Crémant Impérial'' (1899)
</gallery>