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Lot Essay
When Bella Rosenfeld first met Marc Chagall in Vitebsk in 1909, blue was the first color she saw. As she recounted, “when you did catch a glimpse of his eyes, they were as blue as if they’d fallen straight out of the sky. They were strange eyes, not like other people’s—long, almond-shaped... and each seemed to sail along like a little boat. I’d never seen such eyes before” (B. Chagall, First Encounter, New York, 1983, p. 198). Engaged shortly thereafter and married six years later, thus began the love story of the Chagalls. The artist would adoringly render his wife over their years of marriage in spite of the hardships and political upheaval they weathered in the beginning of the 20th Century. Moving from Vitebsk to St. Petersburg, back to Vitebsk, on to Moscow, Berlin, Paris and then New York, perhaps the greatest tragedy of the painter’s life would be the sudden loss of Bella on September 2nd 1944. La Mer, awash in the potent blue that marked the beginning of their partnership, stands as one of Chagall’s greatest odes to his late wife, painted the year after her passing.
This event would mark a clear break in Chagall’s practice. While during shiva, mirrors are customarily covered when mourning the loss of a loved one, Chagall purportedly turned his canvases to face his studio walls and ceased painting for nearly nine months. Having moved to live with his daughter Ida, the artist began to heal, translating Bella’s writings from Yiddish to French. When he returned to painting, his works bore a distinctive quality which Franz Meyer attributes to the fact that “direct observation [gave] way to memory” (op. cit., 1961, p. 470).
The painter’s memory seems to spill out before us in its fullest tonal splendor in La Mer. Many elements are recognizable. The ground is a nighttime ocean featuring a dark indigo boat; Bella, placed within it, is veiled and holding a white bridal bouquet. Apart from other fish at lower right, one leaps at the upper left corner, juxtaposed with a rooster at upper right. Of these symbols, Meyer astutely remarks that before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, “the ritual consumption of cock and fish, count among the experiences of [Chagall’s] childhood” (ibid., p. 136). Apart from Bella, two further human figures are present, also rendered in rich azure. A spectral feminine form both curves into and flows from the left side of the white veil—her profile mirrors Bella’s as her legs plunge into the sea below. At lower left, a small mermaid mirrors the bride, holding a second bouquet, as she swims against an undulating teal current.
Breaking with the field of poignantly ambiguated cool tones, above Bella we see a stark, planar, red form that appears throughout his oeuvre. As the artist tenderly recalls of his wedding, “this is the most important night of my life, that soon, without music, without stars and without sky, against the yellow background of the wall, under a red baldaquin, I shall be married” (My Life, New York, 1960, p. 123). In the present painting, this arresting red pigment also appears in the smaller bouquet at lower left and in the rouge of Bella’s cheek, guiding our gaze towards different parts of the compostion.
Together, these disparate elements and symbols weave and coalesce through our sustained attentiveness to and absorption in La Mer. In the present work, Chagall captures his great love for Bella through recollection itself—memory becomes pigment, and grief crystallizes into elegy. The same blue that once marked the beginning of their love now envelops Bella in a spectral calm, through his loving remembrance, Chagall grants her a final, transcendent serenity.
This event would mark a clear break in Chagall’s practice. While during shiva, mirrors are customarily covered when mourning the loss of a loved one, Chagall purportedly turned his canvases to face his studio walls and ceased painting for nearly nine months. Having moved to live with his daughter Ida, the artist began to heal, translating Bella’s writings from Yiddish to French. When he returned to painting, his works bore a distinctive quality which Franz Meyer attributes to the fact that “direct observation [gave] way to memory” (op. cit., 1961, p. 470).
The painter’s memory seems to spill out before us in its fullest tonal splendor in La Mer. Many elements are recognizable. The ground is a nighttime ocean featuring a dark indigo boat; Bella, placed within it, is veiled and holding a white bridal bouquet. Apart from other fish at lower right, one leaps at the upper left corner, juxtaposed with a rooster at upper right. Of these symbols, Meyer astutely remarks that before Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, “the ritual consumption of cock and fish, count among the experiences of [Chagall’s] childhood” (ibid., p. 136). Apart from Bella, two further human figures are present, also rendered in rich azure. A spectral feminine form both curves into and flows from the left side of the white veil—her profile mirrors Bella’s as her legs plunge into the sea below. At lower left, a small mermaid mirrors the bride, holding a second bouquet, as she swims against an undulating teal current.
Breaking with the field of poignantly ambiguated cool tones, above Bella we see a stark, planar, red form that appears throughout his oeuvre. As the artist tenderly recalls of his wedding, “this is the most important night of my life, that soon, without music, without stars and without sky, against the yellow background of the wall, under a red baldaquin, I shall be married” (My Life, New York, 1960, p. 123). In the present painting, this arresting red pigment also appears in the smaller bouquet at lower left and in the rouge of Bella’s cheek, guiding our gaze towards different parts of the compostion.
Together, these disparate elements and symbols weave and coalesce through our sustained attentiveness to and absorption in La Mer. In the present work, Chagall captures his great love for Bella through recollection itself—memory becomes pigment, and grief crystallizes into elegy. The same blue that once marked the beginning of their love now envelops Bella in a spectral calm, through his loving remembrance, Chagall grants her a final, transcendent serenity.