This remarkable pendant marks a high point in the three-year partnership of Fouquet, the renowned French jeweler, and Mucha, the Czech graphic artist whose work has become synonymous with Art Nouveau style. The two men collaborated from 1899 to 1901, during which time Mucha not only conceived a spectacular series of elaborate jewels executed by Fouquet's Paris atelier but also designed a sumptuous new Fouquet showroom in the rue Royale, where the interior decoration specifically harmonized with the jewelry. The pendant reflects an early-twentieth-century shift away from the prevailing taste for precious stones in traditional historicist settings toward a new approach in which unorthodox materials were chosen for their contribution to the overall design in the belief that the beauty of a jewel depended on its artistic conception rather than the intrinsic value of its materials.

• Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

  Marking: [on reverse stamped into gold armature of woman's head]: G. FOUQUET/ 2159

• Exhibition History

  Alfons Mucha, Musee Fabre, Montpellier, June 13, 2009- September 13, 2009;
  Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, October 9, 2009- January 24, 2010

• References

  Sweeney, Jane (ed)., Alphonse Mucha: The Spirit of Art Nouveau. (Princeton: Yale University Press, 1998) entry 118.
  
  Mucha 1860-1939, Grand Palais, Paris, 1980. exhibition catalogue. p. 62; cat. nos. 153-54
  
  Gary, Marie-Noele de, Les Fouquet Bijoutiers & Joailliers a Paris 1860-1960. Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, 1983. exhibition catalogue, pp. 22-27, 71
  
  Thomas, Albert. "Les Bijoutiers Modernes a L'Exposition Universelle," L'Art Décoratif no. 25, October 1900, pp. 1-8
  
  Vever, Henri. French Jewelry of the Nineteenth Century. Translated by Katherine Purcell. Thames & Hudson, London, 2000, pp. 1140-44; ills. 1116-19

• Timeline of Art History (2000–present)
  Thematic Essays

  Art Nouveau

  Timelines

  Central Europe (not Austria, Germany, and Switzerland), 1900 A.D.–present
• MetPublications
  "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2003–2004": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 62, no. 2 (Fall, 2004) (2004)