
Dance
Alphonse Mucha (1860 to 1939), 1898
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 8 x 10 in, Wrong shape: a 18% crop. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyOne of four panels in which Mucha personified Dance, Painting, Poetry and Music as women, each set in an arched niche against a decorative ground. Dance is the most kinetic of them: she twists, arms raised, her drapery and her long hair whipping to the left as though a wind had just crossed the panel, while a spray of autumn leaves blows through behind her. Mucha builds the whole sense of movement out of line alone, with almost no modelling. Sold as an affordable decorative print for ordinary households — the democratic idea at the heart of Art Nouveau, that beauty should be printable.
- Maker
- Alphonse Mucha (1860 to 1939)
- Date
- 1898
- Medium of the original
- Painting
- Original held by
- Published Paris
- Credit
- Published Paris · via Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- Public domain, verified
- Catalogue number
- PA-00622
Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.
| Size | Why |
|---|---|
| 8 x 10 in | Wrong shape: a 18% crop |
| 8 x 12 in | 144 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 11 x 14 in | Wrong shape: a 16% crop |
| 12 x 16 in | Wrong shape: a 12% crop |
| 12 x 18 in | 96 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 16 x 20 in | Wrong shape: a 18% crop |
| 16 x 24 in | 72 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 18 x 24 in | Wrong shape: a 12% crop |
| 20 x 30 in | 57 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 24 x 30 in | Wrong shape: a 18% crop |
| 24 x 36 in | 48 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
| 30 x 40 in | Wrong shape: a 12% crop |
| 36 x 48 in | Wrong shape: a 12% crop |
| 40 x 60 in | 28 dpi; a historical scan is never enlarged |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 1,159 x 1,763 px, srgb
- Tone
- Darks 67, lights 236 of 255; 0.1% clipped light, 0% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0.1% vivid
- Sharpness
- 158.54
- Notes
- Neutrals lean warm (yellow): the paper and varnish of the original, kept as scanned
- A plain margin is part of the file (6% of an edge): it prints as part of the picture
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