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Lot Essay
The Comité Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
Chagall recalled that the period of the First World War and the revolution in Russia was "one of the most productive of my life" (quoted in S. Alexander, Marc Chagall: A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 167). He married Bella Rosenfeld in the summer of 1915, and in the fall settled in Petrograd. Their daughter Ida was born the following year. Although Chagall had been denied a travel permit to return to Paris because of the war situation and his military deferment had expired, he found a government job in the press office of the war economy bureau under his brother-in-law, and he continued to paint.
Chagall had participated in the "The Year of 1915" exhibition at the Mikhailova Gallery in Moscow, the first major exhibition of his work in Russia. His emerging reputation opened doors in Petrograd, where he moved among the artistic and literary circles there, and he met the poets Alexander Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak and Sergei Esenin. He became friendly with Nadezhda Yevseevna Dobitchina (1884-1948), who was founder and director of the Arts Bureau, a group that organized exhibitions and arranged commissions during the period 1910-1919. She also had her own avant-garde gallery on the Field of Mars in Petrograd.
In April 1916 Dobitchina showed 63 pictures by Chagall, which the artist called his "documents" of Vitebsk. In November of that year Chagall contributed 45 works to the "Jack of Diamonds" group exhibition in Moscow. In 1917 he sent 45 pictures to an exhibition of Jewish artists, also in Moscow. Dobitchina included 73 works by Chagall in another exhibition in her gallery in November 1917.
Dobitchina helped to interest many important Russian collectors in Chagall's work. The celebrated patron of the arts Ivan Morosov bought some paintings, and the engineer Kagan-Chabchay bought 30 works, which were intended for the collection of a new museum of Jewish art in Moscow, a project that was abandoned after the October 1917 revolution. Dobitchina acquired numerous works herself, including the present work, which was very likely exhibited in her gallery.
The subject of the present work, a writer at work in his garret, is an early representation of a theme that figures frequently in the artist's work, in which a solitary creative figure works in his modest surroundings, oblivious to the noise of the world outside. The space may recall the tiny room in which Chagall and Bella stayed when they arrived in Petrograd. The writer, perhaps inspired by one of the artist's poet-friends, is seen in miniature in relation to his surroundings, as if to emphasize how completely he is withdrawn into himself. Such idylls of the private imagination were to become a rare event during the several years following the revolution, when Chagall had to provide for his family in difficult times, and assumed an important public role as Commissar for the Arts under the new government in his native Vitebsk.
Chagall recalled that the period of the First World War and the revolution in Russia was "one of the most productive of my life" (quoted in S. Alexander, Marc Chagall: A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 167). He married Bella Rosenfeld in the summer of 1915, and in the fall settled in Petrograd. Their daughter Ida was born the following year. Although Chagall had been denied a travel permit to return to Paris because of the war situation and his military deferment had expired, he found a government job in the press office of the war economy bureau under his brother-in-law, and he continued to paint.
Chagall had participated in the "The Year of 1915" exhibition at the Mikhailova Gallery in Moscow, the first major exhibition of his work in Russia. His emerging reputation opened doors in Petrograd, where he moved among the artistic and literary circles there, and he met the poets Alexander Blok, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak and Sergei Esenin. He became friendly with Nadezhda Yevseevna Dobitchina (1884-1948), who was founder and director of the Arts Bureau, a group that organized exhibitions and arranged commissions during the period 1910-1919. She also had her own avant-garde gallery on the Field of Mars in Petrograd.
In April 1916 Dobitchina showed 63 pictures by Chagall, which the artist called his "documents" of Vitebsk. In November of that year Chagall contributed 45 works to the "Jack of Diamonds" group exhibition in Moscow. In 1917 he sent 45 pictures to an exhibition of Jewish artists, also in Moscow. Dobitchina included 73 works by Chagall in another exhibition in her gallery in November 1917.
Dobitchina helped to interest many important Russian collectors in Chagall's work. The celebrated patron of the arts Ivan Morosov bought some paintings, and the engineer Kagan-Chabchay bought 30 works, which were intended for the collection of a new museum of Jewish art in Moscow, a project that was abandoned after the October 1917 revolution. Dobitchina acquired numerous works herself, including the present work, which was very likely exhibited in her gallery.
The subject of the present work, a writer at work in his garret, is an early representation of a theme that figures frequently in the artist's work, in which a solitary creative figure works in his modest surroundings, oblivious to the noise of the world outside. The space may recall the tiny room in which Chagall and Bella stayed when they arrived in Petrograd. The writer, perhaps inspired by one of the artist's poet-friends, is seen in miniature in relation to his surroundings, as if to emphasize how completely he is withdrawn into himself. Such idylls of the private imagination were to become a rare event during the several years following the revolution, when Chagall had to provide for his family in difficult times, and assumed an important public role as Commissar for the Arts under the new government in his native Vitebsk.