Anxiété – Eugène Grasset, 1897

“Anxiété”, lithograph from 1897, designed by Eugène Samuel Grasset and published by G. de Malherbe. Szie approx. 26 × 91 cm.

Eugène Grasset (1845–1917) was a Swiss graphic designer and illustrator who spent most of his career working in Paris, where he became one of the founding figures of Art Nouveau. Before devoting himself fully to graphic art, he experimented with ceramics and designed furniture and wallpaper. From around 1877 onwards, he focused almost entirely on illustration and lithography, producing book illustrations, calendars, magazine covers and decorative prints, and developing a highly distinctive visual language in which line, flat colour and ornament form a harmonious whole.

This so-called panneau décoratif forms part of the series “Dix Estampes Décoratives (caractères de femmes, fleurs emblématiques)”, issued in an edition of 750 copies. In this series, Grasset links female figures to symbolic flowers and emotional states, in which decorative beauty and symbolic meaning are closely intertwined.

In Anxiété, a young woman lies in the grass, her head resting on her hand, her gaze dreamy and averted. Her long, flowing hair and the softly draped, purple-toned dress follow the sinuous lines characteristic of Art Nouveau. Early spring flowers called hellebores, or Christmas roses, surround her while jagged clouds fill the sky. In choosing the hellebore, Grasset followed the “language of flowers” to better communicate his message. Hellebores are known for their association with anxiety, and its medicinal power to soothe. Flower symbolism would have been quite familiar to most viewers, some of whom employed them as a secret code in messages to a beloved. 

The composition suggests a mental state: waiting, reverie, uncertainty. Grasset conveys a quiet, introspective unease. It is precisely this subtle psychological charge, combined with a strong decorative character and a powerful colour palette, that makes Anxiété an exemplary work within both Grasset’s oeuvre and early Art Nouveau graphic art.

Price: Euro 1.250,-
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