Mucha & Flers’s Ilsee, Princess of Tripoli – Volume with 130 Color Lithographs, Most printed to each side of paper

This attractive volume of color lithographs is Alphonse Mucha and Robert de Flers’s Ilsee, Princess of Tripoli or Ilsée, princesse de Tripoli. The work was published in Paris by Edition d’Art in 1897. This is a first edition, one of 180 printed on velin. It features 130 color lithographs, many printed to front and verso and surrounding the text in elaborate decoration. There are four full page lithographs without text.

This work was considered one of the finest examples of Mucha’s book illustrations. (Ray, The Art of the French Illustrated Book 366) According to the Mucha Foundation, by the time Robert de Flers completed the manuscript for the story, Mucha had only three months to complete the 134 lithographs to illustrate the text. He later wrote: “We worked on four stones simultaneously. I did some of the drawings straight onto the stone. Other things, particularly the decorative edgings, I drew on tracing paper which was then passed on to the draughtsmen who continued the work with the colors I specified. I hardly had time to sketch out the motif for an ornament when they came and took it from my hands and got down to work on it.”