Vintage Poster Archives
Elisabeth Sonrel 1900 | Art Nouveau Water Lily Poster
Elisabeth Sonrel 1900 | Art Nouveau Water Lily Poster
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A young woman with copper-red hair bends over a still pond to gather a white water lily, one arm raised to hold a slender willow branch, the other extended toward the bloom. Tall yellow bearded irises frame the foreground on both sides, their amber and purple-maroon markings rendered with botanical precision. A sinuous gold and cream Art Nouveau border arches over the scene, completing a composition that balances liquid line with meticulous floral detail.
Elisabeth Sonrel (1874, Tours – 1953, Sceaux) trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Jules Lefebvre and exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1893. Her 1895 painting Le Sommeil de la Vierge won the Henri Lehmann prize of 3,000 francs at the Exposition Universelle of 1900. In her early career she produced lithographs and posters in the Art Nouveau style; this Flowers of Water composition, with its whiplash ornamental border, luminous female figure, and richly described botanical foreground, belongs to that phase of her work and to the movement at its height.
The design is one of a documented group of four compositions pairing Sonrel's idealised female figures with specific flowers. Her Pre-Raphaelite influences, absorbed through close study of Botticelli during visits to Florence and Rome, are visible in the copper hair, the flowing drapery, and the quality of light across the water surface.
Reproduced as an archival print from a restored source of the original lithograph. The palette of cream, amber gold, and sage green suits a bathroom, bedroom, or dressing room setting equally well.
