Macklowe Gallery Decorative Arts

Argy-Rousseau's near-unique ability to gracefully soften the starkness of Art Deco design without ever sacrificing the strength of the design is on full display in this remarkable, p...

This table lamp by Gustav Gurschner and Loetz, titled Die Verlassene (“The Forsaken”), transforms a functional object into a poetic meditation on abandonment. The composition is stru...

Argy-Rousseau's near-unique ability to gracefully soften the starkness of Art Deco design without ever sacrificing the strength of the design is on full display in this remarkable, p...

This four-sided hanging Moorish lantern features red turtleback glass tiles set within intricate coiled wire filigree—a technique derived from ancient Greco-Roman jewelry. Its bold p...

This Tiffany Studios turtleback tile lantern is composed of four amber turtleback tiles and a base adorned with a quatrefoil motif—formed by a square nested within a diamond. Each ti...

This exquisite Zsolnay jardiniere features a pair of golden pheasants with richly striated plumage in shimmering shades of gold, green, blue, and magenta. As lifelong mates, golden p...

This vide-poche depicts a whelk (Buccin) beside a strand of fucus, the brown algae traditionally harvested along the Breton coast. Such gathering was historically undertaken by goémo...

This exquisite pâte de verre sculpture by Amalric Walter captures an amber-hued cockatiel poised with quiet alertness upon a rocky outcrop, its form subtly animated by the interplay ...

This carved mahogany and marquetry table by Émile Gallé features a cherry blossom–shaped top, inlaid with blossoming boughs and a violin. The floral imagery draws on the Yoshino cher...

This exquisite two-tiered Japonist table by Émile Gallé features marquetry that juxtaposes a planar rendering of an arrowhead flower with a fully articulated botanical view of the pl...

This pâte-de-verre vide-poche by Amalric Walter depicts a greyish-purple Eurasian eagle-owl perched upon a nest of green and amber oak leaves and acorns. The owl’s mottled plumage is...

The Seasons (Les Saisons) by Alphonse Mucha is among the most celebrated expressions of Art Nouveau printmaking: a suite of four poetic lithographs—Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter—each allegory embodied by an idealized female figure adorned with the flora and fauna of their eponymous season. Spring (Les Printemps) Spring emerges as an ethereal, blonde sylph—an air elemental—standing before a haze of apple blossoms. She is framed by a delicate wreath of blooming dogwood, a motif Mucha studied from life. She fashions a lyre-like instrument from a fresh green branch, her own flowing hair forming its strings, evoking the poetic ideal of the Aeolian harp—an instrument played not by human hands but by the wind itself. This association aligns her with Romantic notions of nature as an animating force, written by contemporaneous poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. At her feet, songbirds—including the ortolan bunting, long associated in French culture with innocence, and the exotic red-billed leiothrix, prized for its melodious song—gather to animate the composition with sound. The floral border of her garment, composed of narcissi, asters, dianthus, and cuckoo flowers, reinforces the sense of the abundance that defines the season. Summer (L’Été) Summer is rendered in languid repose, seated beside a reflective pool, her body slackened by the heat. Crowned with vivid red poppies—flowers of both sleep and sensuality—she dips her feet into cool water, seeking relief from the oppressive warmth. Ivy curls around her form, her translucent white drapery appears to slip from her shoulders, heightening the sense of languor. Unlike the airiness of Spring, Summer is grounded in the body, evoking the sensuous, almost narcotic stillness of a long, sun-drenched afternoon. Autumn (L’Automne) Autumn is richly adorned, her deep auburn hair echoing the tones of fallen leaves that surround her. She turns her gaze not outward, but toward the ripe grapes she holds—a symbol of harvest and abundance. A crown of chrysanthemums, rendered in white and blue, rests upon her head, a flower closely associated with Mucha himself, who was known—according to his son Jiří Mucha—to wear one in his buttonhole. Her costume is elaborately detailed with filigree disk brooches inspired by the stage jewelry of Sarah Bernhardt, particularly in her role as Theodora. These jewelry designs by Mucha drew on historical sources ranging from Byzantine mosaics studied in Ravenna to the earlier Merovingian traditions of Frankish and Lombardic women, who wore paired brooches...