#art-nouveau

The story goes that this was a rush job over the New Year holiday, when the printer had nobody else free and needed something for the hoardings by the following week. The actress it advertises liked it enough to tie him to a contract for years afterwards, and people supposedly peeled the things off walls overnight to keep them.

This came out of a job rather than out of nowhere — according to Wikipedia the actress hired him to design costumes and sets for a huge open-air Joan of Arc she was staging, and the panel came along with that work.

There's actual gold leaf on this, plus silver and platinum — his father was a gold engraver, it's said, so he knew the trade before he ever painted. When it first went on show it was listed under a plainer name, just 'lovers'.