Artist · 8 prints
Raphael Kirchner Prints
About Raphael Kirchner
Raphael Kirchner (1875–1917) was an Austrian illustrator and painter, born in Vienna, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and began his career as an illustrator linked to the Vienna Secession. In 1900 he moved to Paris and drew for the weekly magazine La Vie Parisienne, while his paintings of Montmartre nightlife brought him further success. Soon after the First World War broke out in 1914 he left Europe for New York, where he died in 1917.
Raphael Kirchner's work belongs to Art Nouveau, with flowing outlines, decorative borders and stylised women at the centre. The so-called Kirchner Girl, elegant and often mildly erotic, appeared on hundreds of picture postcards and is seen as an early form of the pin-up. In New York the designer Joseph Urban hired him to paint decorative panels for the Century Theatre, and his lobby panels of the Seven Deadly Sins were later issued as a popular postcard set that spread his work in America.
Raphael Kirchner prints: reproductions of Art Nouveau illustrations by Raphael Kirchner, the Austrian artist known for his postcards of Parisian women. Works here include Au Bord de la Mer, La Perruque Verte and Entre Deux Poses from the series De la Brune à la Blonde, along with Vive la France and Redhead with a Cigarette.
This selection centres on Kirchner's women: fashionable, playful and often posed against plain or patterned grounds. Several plates come from De la Brune à la Blonde, and the set also includes a portrait titled Marion Davis and an ex libris, or bookplate, design for Georges Goury. The images are light-hearted and decorative rather than narrative.
The light, playful tone suits a bedroom, dressing room, bathroom or powder room, and a group of the series plates works well as a gallery wall. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
