“During his whole American period... Mucha worked on only two projects to advertise commercial products: Warner’s Rust Proof Corsets and this poster. Since he is known to have refused many lucrative offers to do commercial work in this period, each of these two exceptions stands out as a mystery... Joseph Triner was... a Chicago chemist who concocted a stomach remedy... made from ‘pure California Red Grape-Vine and fresh herbs, classed among the Vegetable Bitters’... Perhaps the most intriguing, and in its own way most revealing statement is the last sentence of [a] little handbill: ‘Extensively advertised, especially among the Bohemians, Germans, Poles, Slovenians, Hungarians, Croatians, and Lithuanians.’ Why Mr. Triner went to extra trouble to publicize his elixir among these diverse minorities is very likely the same reason why he chose a Bohemian artist to do his poster: he was himself a Czech immigrant and was probably well known among them” (Rennert/Weill, p. 320). This is the 40th anniversary reissue of the design with a 1930 calendarium.
Brown & Bigelow, St. Paul, Minn.
literature: Rennert/Weill, 92 (var); Lendl/Prague, p. 263 (var); PAI-LXX, 506
This work will ship from Lambertville, New Jersey.