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Lot Essay
Painted in gestural brushstrokes and swathes of rich, vibrant colour, Marc Chagall’s Les paysans au puits ou Scène biblique sur fond bleu et vert is a luminous vision of a dreamlike village scene. In the centre of the composition, a woman cradles her infant child, while behind her a robed bearded man approaches, one hand resting on his heart, and the other clutching a pitcher. To their right, brightly-dressed villagers gather around a well, carrying their jugs and vessels to this communal source of water, as farmyard animals move amongst the crowd. Above the urban settlement, a garlanded white cow floats between two vibrantly blossoming trees, and a white angel soars through the nebulous swirls of blue and violet. Painted in 1981, this large work dates from the zenith of the artist’s long and prolific career. At this time, the artist was happily ensconced at Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France, living a deeply contented and peaceful life, while still painting with the same creative zeal that had defined his work since his earliest days as an artist.
Within the context of Chagall’s oeuvre, Les paysans au puits has been read by some scholars, such as Susan Compton, as a poetic interpretation of the Bible’s story of Jacob and Rachel, as narrated in the Book of Genesis. In the story, Jacob first encounters Rachel at a well, where he moved the stone on top of the well, enabling Rachel’s flock of sheep to drink the water, and the two fell deeply in love instantly. Jacob asked Rachel’s father for her hand in marriage, who agreed to allow Jacob to marry his daughter in return for seven years of hard labour. In the text, these seven arduous years feel like only a few days for Jacob, who is occupied by his all-encompassing love for Rachel. The Bible provided a great source of inspiration to Chagall, who was enthralled not only by its stories and parables, but also by the poetry of the language itself. To him, it offered another world that lay beyond everyday reality: ‘Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible’, he stated in on 7 July 1973 – his eighty-sixth birthday – at the inauguration of the Musée National Marc Chagall in Nice, the first government-sponsored museum in France ever devoted to the work of a then living artist. ‘It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time. Ever since then, I have searched for its reflection in life and in Art. The Bible is like an echo of nature and this is the secret I have tried to convey’ (‘The Biblical Message’, 1973; quoted in B. Harshav, ed., Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Stanford, 2003, p. 172).
Biblical themes occupied Chagall throughout his career, materialising in his early works with subjects including Adam and Eve and the Crucifixion, often fusing Jewish and Christian iconography together in a single image. It was not until 1931, however, when his dealer Ambroise Vollard commissioned him to create a series of etchings for an illustrated version of the Old Testament of the Bible, that Chagall fully embraced this subject. Even while continuing to work on two other books for Vollard, La Fontaine’s Fables and Gogol’s Dead Souls, Chagall began to paint gouaches of Biblical stories to prepare for this new endeavour. The artist immersed himself in the project, travelling to Jerusalem, Galilee, and the Judean desert in 1931, before returning to France filled with ideas for the illustrative series that he would work on for the next twenty five years. ‘In the East I found the Bible,’ he recalled, ‘and part of my own being’ (quoted in J. Wullschlager, Chagall: Love and Exile, London, 2008, pp. 349-350). Even after he finished Vollard’s commission in 1956, Biblical motifs continued to percolate through his oeuvre, and in his Biblically-inspired works such as Les paysans au puits, the subjects take on a universality, transcending time and place to become modern statements on themes of life, love, death, joy or suffering.
The present work is permeated above all by an overwhelming sense of love, evoked not only by the maternal embrace of mother and child, but also by the harmonious community of the characters at the well, as well as the peaceful co-existence of humans and animals. The vibrant composition exudes joy and abundance, as the trees flourish with a symphonic array of blossoms, and the radiant white angel floats serenely above the rooftops, as if heralding this vision of harmony. It is Chagall’s rich use of colour that endows his works with their emotional depth and impact, creating a profound, enchanting atmosphere in the worlds he conjures.
For Chagall, colour had always been one of the most integral elements of a composition, and he described it as ‘the pulse of a work of art’ (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, Connecticut, 1995, p.180). The swirls of blues and greens that sweep through Les paysans au puits float like clouds through the scene, emphasising the dreamlike, mythical essences of Chagall’s vision. Against these sweeping expanses of colour, Chagall uses staccato brushstrokes to configure smaller details, like the flowers and villagers, skilfully varying his techniques to create a richly layered painting. With its vibrant colour and bold swashes of medium, the present work relays Chagall’s love of creating, and artistic exploration. ‘It is finally the works themselves that must reveal to the viewer [Chagall’s] joy in his painting… which shines triumphantly through his intensely human works’ (S. Compton, ‘Themes in the Work of Chagall,’ in Marc Chagall, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p. 19).
Within the context of Chagall’s oeuvre, Les paysans au puits has been read by some scholars, such as Susan Compton, as a poetic interpretation of the Bible’s story of Jacob and Rachel, as narrated in the Book of Genesis. In the story, Jacob first encounters Rachel at a well, where he moved the stone on top of the well, enabling Rachel’s flock of sheep to drink the water, and the two fell deeply in love instantly. Jacob asked Rachel’s father for her hand in marriage, who agreed to allow Jacob to marry his daughter in return for seven years of hard labour. In the text, these seven arduous years feel like only a few days for Jacob, who is occupied by his all-encompassing love for Rachel. The Bible provided a great source of inspiration to Chagall, who was enthralled not only by its stories and parables, but also by the poetry of the language itself. To him, it offered another world that lay beyond everyday reality: ‘Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible’, he stated in on 7 July 1973 – his eighty-sixth birthday – at the inauguration of the Musée National Marc Chagall in Nice, the first government-sponsored museum in France ever devoted to the work of a then living artist. ‘It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time. Ever since then, I have searched for its reflection in life and in Art. The Bible is like an echo of nature and this is the secret I have tried to convey’ (‘The Biblical Message’, 1973; quoted in B. Harshav, ed., Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Stanford, 2003, p. 172).
Biblical themes occupied Chagall throughout his career, materialising in his early works with subjects including Adam and Eve and the Crucifixion, often fusing Jewish and Christian iconography together in a single image. It was not until 1931, however, when his dealer Ambroise Vollard commissioned him to create a series of etchings for an illustrated version of the Old Testament of the Bible, that Chagall fully embraced this subject. Even while continuing to work on two other books for Vollard, La Fontaine’s Fables and Gogol’s Dead Souls, Chagall began to paint gouaches of Biblical stories to prepare for this new endeavour. The artist immersed himself in the project, travelling to Jerusalem, Galilee, and the Judean desert in 1931, before returning to France filled with ideas for the illustrative series that he would work on for the next twenty five years. ‘In the East I found the Bible,’ he recalled, ‘and part of my own being’ (quoted in J. Wullschlager, Chagall: Love and Exile, London, 2008, pp. 349-350). Even after he finished Vollard’s commission in 1956, Biblical motifs continued to percolate through his oeuvre, and in his Biblically-inspired works such as Les paysans au puits, the subjects take on a universality, transcending time and place to become modern statements on themes of life, love, death, joy or suffering.
The present work is permeated above all by an overwhelming sense of love, evoked not only by the maternal embrace of mother and child, but also by the harmonious community of the characters at the well, as well as the peaceful co-existence of humans and animals. The vibrant composition exudes joy and abundance, as the trees flourish with a symphonic array of blossoms, and the radiant white angel floats serenely above the rooftops, as if heralding this vision of harmony. It is Chagall’s rich use of colour that endows his works with their emotional depth and impact, creating a profound, enchanting atmosphere in the worlds he conjures.
For Chagall, colour had always been one of the most integral elements of a composition, and he described it as ‘the pulse of a work of art’ (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, Connecticut, 1995, p.180). The swirls of blues and greens that sweep through Les paysans au puits float like clouds through the scene, emphasising the dreamlike, mythical essences of Chagall’s vision. Against these sweeping expanses of colour, Chagall uses staccato brushstrokes to configure smaller details, like the flowers and villagers, skilfully varying his techniques to create a richly layered painting. With its vibrant colour and bold swashes of medium, the present work relays Chagall’s love of creating, and artistic exploration. ‘It is finally the works themselves that must reveal to the viewer [Chagall’s] joy in his painting… which shines triumphantly through his intensely human works’ (S. Compton, ‘Themes in the Work of Chagall,’ in Marc Chagall, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p. 19).