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Lot Essay
Following his move to the United States in April of 1941, Chagall spent the summer months in Connecticut, where Alexander Calder and André Masson lived nearby. Chagall struggled with adapting to his new American environment--he was unable to speak English ('It took me thirty years to learn bad French. English can wait!') and cut off from most of his old contacts. He nevertheless found time to enjoy the frenetic pace of life in New York and the vigor of the variable regional climate. At the same time, as the present work shows, Chagall found comfort in subjects that had given him pleasure throughout his life.
For me a circus is a magic show which appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing, it is profound... It is a magic world, a circus is a timeless game where tears and smiles, the play of the arms and legs take the form of great art. But what do most of these circus people earn? A piece of bread. Night brings them solitude, sadness. Until the next day when the evening flooded with electric lights announces a new old-life. The circus seems to me like the most tragic show on earth. Through the centuries, it has been the most poignant cry in man's search for amusement and joy, it often takes the form of high poetry. I seem to see a Don Quixote in search of an ideal, like that inspired clown who wept and dreamed of human love... (quoted in exh. cat., Chagall: A retrospective, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, p. 196).
It was in the late 1920s, as Chagall was finishing a series of gouaches for Ambroise Vollard based on the fables of La Fontaine, that Vollard invited Chagall and his daughter Ida to the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris. At Vollard's suggestion, Chagall, who already held fond childhood memories of the fleeting visits of the circus to his hometown, executed a second series of nineteen gouaches on the theme of the circus, many of them based on sketches he made in Vollard's private box. The variety of characters and poses in these works were to become elements of Chagall's visual vocabulary that he returned to on many occasions throughout his career.
For me a circus is a magic show which appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing, it is profound... It is a magic world, a circus is a timeless game where tears and smiles, the play of the arms and legs take the form of great art. But what do most of these circus people earn? A piece of bread. Night brings them solitude, sadness. Until the next day when the evening flooded with electric lights announces a new old-life. The circus seems to me like the most tragic show on earth. Through the centuries, it has been the most poignant cry in man's search for amusement and joy, it often takes the form of high poetry. I seem to see a Don Quixote in search of an ideal, like that inspired clown who wept and dreamed of human love... (quoted in exh. cat., Chagall: A retrospective, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, p. 196).
It was in the late 1920s, as Chagall was finishing a series of gouaches for Ambroise Vollard based on the fables of La Fontaine, that Vollard invited Chagall and his daughter Ida to the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris. At Vollard's suggestion, Chagall, who already held fond childhood memories of the fleeting visits of the circus to his hometown, executed a second series of nineteen gouaches on the theme of the circus, many of them based on sketches he made in Vollard's private box. The variety of characters and poses in these works were to become elements of Chagall's visual vocabulary that he returned to on many occasions throughout his career.