Model posing in Mucha's studio, rue du val de Grâce, Paris

The Czech graphic artist and painter Alphonse Mucha’s idiosyncratic aesthetic revolutionised poster design. His use of decorative patterning, pastel colours, flat planes and sinuous form became synonymous with art nouveau and distinguished his designs for posters, advertisements, postcards, magazine covers and decorative panels as well as jewellery and fabric design.

While he primarily worked with print media, Mucha began to work with photography on a borrowed camera in the early 1880s, while working in Vienna. For decades, he produced images like this as preliminary studies and as reference material for his graphic work. This is typical in exposing Mucha's working methodology and the cluttered interior of his studio but also in elucidating his approach to composition and his penchant for ornamentation.

Having lived in Paris since 1887, in 1896 after his first major success working for the celebrity actor Sarah Bernhardt, Mucha purchased his first camera and moved into a studio in the rue du Val de Grâce that had large windows and a glass ceiling which could accommodate his photographic pursuits. Many important artists, writers and musicians visited his studio and it was also the setting for one of the earliest cinematic projections by the Lumière brothers.

This photograph is of one of the many models Mucha worked with regularly, and shows her in a subtly contorted position, her back to the camera, peering over her shoulder, hands resting boldly on her hips. Most of Mucha’s photographic shots were not taken with a specific project in mind. Rather, he would have his models improvise a number of postures in front of the camera for future reference. Experimental and intuitive in his approach, Mucha assembled a photographic archive of gesture. Amongst the highly stylized mise-en-scène of these studio portraits, several objects reappear frequently, specifically the embroidered Chinese textile and the ornate mirror that feature in this photograph.