The Quill
Sheet: 30 × 12 5/8 inches (76.2 × 32.07 cm)
Posters and Modern Color Prints, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, October 5–December 29, 1985, no. 32.
Mucha’s Muses: Sarah Bernhardt and the Spirit of Art Nouveau, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 31, 2026–January 17, 2027, no cat.
Alphonse Mucha
Czech, 1860–1939
Printed by Imprimerie Champenois
French, active 1859–1927
The Quill, 1899
Color lithograph
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Van Loan, 81-4
Mucha’s unnamed muse holds a quill pen and laurel branches, signifying knowledge and poetry. Her hair is arranged in the iconic whiplash curves of Art Nouveau. The lithograph’s narrow format and the round mosaic haloing the woman’s head echo the style Mucha famously created for Sarah Bernhardt (see La Samaritaine nearby). In contrast, Mucha omitted any text or advertisements in this lithograph to entice buyers to decorate their homes with it.
Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Van Loan, by February 16, 1981;
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Van Loan to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1981.
Jiri Mucha, ed., The Graphic Work of Alphonse Mucha (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973), 111, as La Plume.
Ann Bridges, ed., Alphonse Mucha: The Complete Graphic Works (London: Academy Editions, 1980), no. P27, p. 149, as Le Plume/The Pen.
Jack Rennert and Alain Weill, Alphonse Mucha: The Complete Posters and Panels (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1984), no. 64, pp. 240–43, as The Quill.
Posters and Modern Color Prints, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1985), 11, as La Plume.
George L. McKenna, The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Prints 1460–1995 (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in association with The University of Washington Press, 1996), 298, as La Plume.
