Dance - Mucha, is a French woven jacquard wall tapestry. In this work by Czechoslovakian artist Alphonse Mucha, the art of Dance is personified in a piece from his series, The Arts, 1898. An ethereal woman is shown within a swirl of motion. She is clad in a very low cut flowing delicate gown, hair streaming and head thrown back in exaltation. For the background Mucha discarded traditional attributes such as musical instruments, paintbrushes and quills. Instead he emphasized the creative inspiration of natural beauty by giving each of the arts a circular backdrop featuring a motif from nature indicating a particular time of day: for Dance falling leaves blown by a morning breeze; for Painting a red flower encircled by rainbows in fresh daylight; for Poetry the evening star shining in the sky at dusk; for Music the song of birds at moon-rise. Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful young women in flowing, vaguely Neoclassical-looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed halos behind their heads often using pale pastel colors. The Mucha Style became known as Art Nouveau French for new art and was often imitated.
