Studio: international art (48.1910)

Studio- Talk

"TRAGEDY." DECORATION FOR NEW GERMAN THEATRE,
NEW YORK BY ALPHONSE MUCHA

congenial art life of his earlier career seeming to
take possession of him at times.

Lucas's studies of night and twilight are written
down with virile strokes of decided and often
opponent colours, with a preference to deep reds
and blues, made harmonious by the gentler accents
of a peculiar and personal method of cross-hatching
in complementary colours, which has almost the
character of a glaze. His colour notes are decided;
his pictures do not carry out one solitary colour
tone, but consist of many themes of colour,
which, beautiful in themselves, are conducive to
produce one powerful tonality. Lucas is vehement
and yet delicate, broad and yet conscientious. He
never concerns himself with superficialities, the
"puerilities of mere effect"; it is in the larger
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aspects of nature, her dramatic significance and her
poetic splendour, that he is chiefly interested.

The three large proscenium panels for the New
German Theatre, New York, which Alphonse Mucha
has recently finished—and of which two are here
reproduced—are, by reason of their size and
elaborate decorative scheme, one of his finest
achievements. In them Mucha has reached the
very maturity of his artistic powers of expression.
These panels measure twelve by twenty-four feet,
and the difficulties of keeping such a composition
in "one tonal plane" will be appreciated by every
mural painter. The dominant colour notes are
violet, grey, green, and a golden red.

In the panel, Tragedy, the artist has made the

"COMEDY." DECORATION FOR NEW GERMAN THEATRE,
NEW YORK BY ALPHONSE MUCHA