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Lot Essay
Painted between 1955-1957, Marc Chagall’s Autour de Vence is a monumental meditation on life, love, creation and inspiration. In this oneiric composition, Chagall transcends the boundary between the heavenly and the earthly, as Biblical motifs float through the swirling, silvery night sky, above the sleeping town of Vence. In the foreground of the scene, a painter—a reflection, perhaps, of Chagall himself—appears before a table topped with fruit and flowers, as well as a loaf of bread and a seven-branched candlestick. Green foliage, ruby-red roses, and sprays of mimosas spring abundantly from a vase beside him, and his face is bathed in a warm golden glow, a reflection of the yellow blooms which curl over the crown of his head, as if in an enveloping caress. Leaves dance across his brow to form a garland, while with his right hand he cradles a posy of greenery to his chest. On the other side of the bouquet, a donkey playfully peeps out, one of Chagall’s favorite animal avatars.
The artist had moved to Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the South of France with his second wife, Valentina “Vava” Brodsky, in 1950, settling into their new home, Les Collines, on the slopes of the Baou des Blancs. The villa's picturesque views of the undulating landscape and the idyllic town of Vence were a source of inspiration to Chagall, as acknowledged by the art historian Franz Meyer in 1965: “[Les Collines] is responsible not only for the view from his window on the little old walled town and the steeple of its medieval cathedral, which appears in so many of his pictures, but also for the novel charm of the painterly mood which embraces all things that grow and blossom” (F. Meyer, op. cit., 1965, p. 501). Autour de Vence encapsulates Meyer’s sentiment with both the recognizable skyline of Vence, marked by the rectangular bell tower of the Cathédrale de la Nativité-de-Marie, and the glorious symphony of colorful flowers and fruits in the foreground. Against the enigmatic nocturnal backdrop, the jewel-toned richness of nature’s offerings take on a dreamlike vibrancy, further enhanced by Chagall’s brushstrokes, where the impasto effect imbues the blossoms with a textured physicality.
In the present work, Vence lies at the core of the composition, under a gleaming crescent moon. While Biblical imagery soars above, adorning the night sky like constellations. Chagall infuses this pearlescent cosmos with a sense of the ephemeral—the motifs lie on top of one another, overlapping and intertwined, enhancing the feeling of transient movement, which is simultaneously evoked by the varying scales of the figures. Chagall had incorporated Biblical themes into his art throughout his career, often fusing Jewish and Christian iconography together in a single image. However, it was not until 1931, when his dealer Ambroise Vollard commissioned a series of etchings for an illustrated version of the Old Testament of the Bible, that Chagall fully embraced the subject.
Chagall finalized the project for Vollard in 1956, and he remained mesmerized by these subjects, working on a number of large-scale canvases that explored Biblical themes throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Chagall emphasized that these works were to be understood as poetic expressions of universality rather than as religious images. “Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible,” the artist declared. “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,” in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 295).
In Autour de Vence, an embracing mother and child fill the left hand side of the canvas, while a branch stretches out above them, the image of a couple unfurling from its leaves, akin to Medieval depictions of the Tree of Jesse. To the right of them, Elijah ascends in his chariot, and in the upper right of the canvas a rendering of Jacob’s Ladder floats above the head of a blue sea creature as it engulfs two green human legs, recalling the story of Jonah and the Whale. In the center of the composition, a fish swims from left to right in the background, its body composed of buildings, interlaced like scales, as a wooden wall clock bearing Christ glides in front of it. In this striking image, the white clockface glows like a halo, while Christ’s feet rest on the golden pendulum. The distinctive carved frame is that of the clock that hung in Chagall’s parents’ house in Vitebsk, first appearing in his oeuvre in 1914. The timepiece went on to feature in the artist’s work intermittently, a reference to the eternal and unchanging pace of time.
Painted so close to the completion of the illustrative series for Vollard, Autour de Vence can perhaps be read as a celebration of the inspiration Chagall found in the stories of the Bible. The motif of the painter in Chagall’s work naturally involved an element of self-representation, and has often been linked to Chagall’s extensive repertoire of self-portraiture. In Autour de Vence, images of the narratives that had transfixed the artist for many years soar high above the figure, embodying Chagall’s declaration that he had become an artist, because painting “seemed to me like a window through which I could have taken flight toward another world” (quoted in N. Lynton, “Chagall ‘over the Roofs of the World,’” in Chagall, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p. 20).
The artist had moved to Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the South of France with his second wife, Valentina “Vava” Brodsky, in 1950, settling into their new home, Les Collines, on the slopes of the Baou des Blancs. The villa's picturesque views of the undulating landscape and the idyllic town of Vence were a source of inspiration to Chagall, as acknowledged by the art historian Franz Meyer in 1965: “[Les Collines] is responsible not only for the view from his window on the little old walled town and the steeple of its medieval cathedral, which appears in so many of his pictures, but also for the novel charm of the painterly mood which embraces all things that grow and blossom” (F. Meyer, op. cit., 1965, p. 501). Autour de Vence encapsulates Meyer’s sentiment with both the recognizable skyline of Vence, marked by the rectangular bell tower of the Cathédrale de la Nativité-de-Marie, and the glorious symphony of colorful flowers and fruits in the foreground. Against the enigmatic nocturnal backdrop, the jewel-toned richness of nature’s offerings take on a dreamlike vibrancy, further enhanced by Chagall’s brushstrokes, where the impasto effect imbues the blossoms with a textured physicality.
In the present work, Vence lies at the core of the composition, under a gleaming crescent moon. While Biblical imagery soars above, adorning the night sky like constellations. Chagall infuses this pearlescent cosmos with a sense of the ephemeral—the motifs lie on top of one another, overlapping and intertwined, enhancing the feeling of transient movement, which is simultaneously evoked by the varying scales of the figures. Chagall had incorporated Biblical themes into his art throughout his career, often fusing Jewish and Christian iconography together in a single image. However, it was not until 1931, when his dealer Ambroise Vollard commissioned a series of etchings for an illustrated version of the Old Testament of the Bible, that Chagall fully embraced the subject.
Chagall finalized the project for Vollard in 1956, and he remained mesmerized by these subjects, working on a number of large-scale canvases that explored Biblical themes throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Chagall emphasized that these works were to be understood as poetic expressions of universality rather than as religious images. “Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible,” the artist declared. “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,” in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 295).
In Autour de Vence, an embracing mother and child fill the left hand side of the canvas, while a branch stretches out above them, the image of a couple unfurling from its leaves, akin to Medieval depictions of the Tree of Jesse. To the right of them, Elijah ascends in his chariot, and in the upper right of the canvas a rendering of Jacob’s Ladder floats above the head of a blue sea creature as it engulfs two green human legs, recalling the story of Jonah and the Whale. In the center of the composition, a fish swims from left to right in the background, its body composed of buildings, interlaced like scales, as a wooden wall clock bearing Christ glides in front of it. In this striking image, the white clockface glows like a halo, while Christ’s feet rest on the golden pendulum. The distinctive carved frame is that of the clock that hung in Chagall’s parents’ house in Vitebsk, first appearing in his oeuvre in 1914. The timepiece went on to feature in the artist’s work intermittently, a reference to the eternal and unchanging pace of time.
Painted so close to the completion of the illustrative series for Vollard, Autour de Vence can perhaps be read as a celebration of the inspiration Chagall found in the stories of the Bible. The motif of the painter in Chagall’s work naturally involved an element of self-representation, and has often been linked to Chagall’s extensive repertoire of self-portraiture. In Autour de Vence, images of the narratives that had transfixed the artist for many years soar high above the figure, embodying Chagall’s declaration that he had become an artist, because painting “seemed to me like a window through which I could have taken flight toward another world” (quoted in N. Lynton, “Chagall ‘over the Roofs of the World,’” in Chagall, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p. 20).