Lot Essay
A joyous, reveling scene, Marc Chagall’s Le cirque - L'écuyère depicts the artist’s pertinent theme of the circus, employed as the all-encompassing allegory for life as he witnessed it. Chagall delights the viewer with his wondrous dream-like vision depicted in bright, jewel-like colors. A pair of lovers in an amorous embrace are sensuously illuminated by a ruby-red spotlight. As they perform on horseback they seem to be floating. Around them, a colorful myriad of acrobats, musicians, animals, and clowns dazzle the audience who sits enveloped in an ultramarine shadow. The dreamy scene is playfully suspended between exuberance and mystery, all while embodying Chagall’s eternal belief in the ultimate significance of love and his revelry in the cycles, seasons, trials and successes of life that align with the very spirit and essence of the artistic calling.
The origins of the circus theme go back to Chagall’s early life as a young man in the Belarusian town of Vitebsk. Chagall never forgot a particular moment when he observed a father and his young children perform on the street, hoping to earn a few pennies for bread, their efforts at acrobatic stunts clumsy yet clearly strenuous. The passing public deemed this performance more pathetic than applaudable, and Chagall sadly watched as they afterwards walked away, unappreciated and empty-handed. At that moment, and at certain other times during his career, Chagall must have pondered that this notion of performance, of an attempt to inspire and entrance, was aligned in a poetic way with the challenges of life of one who may pursue the career of an artist.
Of course, if the artist were talented, dedicated and fortunate enough as Chagall was, there might be an altogether more favorable outcome, more akin to the scene depicted in Le cirque - L'écuyère. This moment of abundant delight and applause aligns with Chagall’s own great success in art, life and love during a harmonious and abundant time in his late career. It is a celebration not only of his success, having overcome the many challenges he faced throughout his life, but a metaphorical appreciation of the richness of lived experience in all its variety. Chagall here summons the experience and spectacle of circus performance –as a vivid and exhilarating metaphor for the life he had decided to lead. The vision and dream of the circus became the very heart of Chagall’s personal mythology.
The theme of the lovers is also a highly celebrated and represented theme within Chagall’s oeuvre. Exuding romance and desire informed by his own life, the lovers represent both the youthful passion for his first wife and great love Bella, as well as theenduring and faithful love of his second wife, Valentina “Vava” Brodsky, to whom Chagall was married at the time of painting Le cirque - L'écuyère, and who would remain his devoted companion until his passing. For Chagall, love and beauty were powerful elements, forces that could only bring greater harmony to a world that appeared in need of it during his lifetime. Explaining his dedication to this cause, he said, ‘I thought that only love and uncalculating devotion towards others will lead to the greatest harmony in life and in art of which humanity has been dreaming so long. And this must, of course, be included in each utterance, in each brushstroke, and in each color’ (Chagall, quoted in Chagall: A Retrospective, ed. J. Baal-Teshuva, Westport, 1995, p. 208). In Le cirque - L'écuyère, the allegory of love and the circus come together magically and effervescently.
Paris in the early 20th century, was a circus-goer’s paradise. Having first arrived in June 1911, Chagall soon discovered the famed Cirque Médrano on the edge of Montmartre and the Cirque d’Hiver in the 11ème arrondissement. Chagall painted a notably modernist picture of a female acrobat before returning to his homeland in mid-1914. He thereby joined a long and distinguished line of painters working in France who featured the circus in their work, from Antoine Watteau–a favorite of Chagall–to Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and among his immediate contemporaries, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Kees Van Dongen and Fernand Léger.
The circus subjects that Chagall developed in 1926-1930 would continue to bear fruit for the next half century of this artist’s amazingly long life, finding their pinnacle in masterpieces such as Le grand cirque (fig. 1) and Couple au cirque (fig. 2) Le cirque - L'écuyère. shares the same abundance of energy, the joyous circular arena metaphorically aligned with the cycles and seasons of life, celebrating the young couple, the lovers, underneath a radiant beacon, interchangeably the sun, moon and star. As such, it is clear to see that Chagall’s experience of life and its metaphor in the circus, as he conceived of it, were inextricably intertwined.
The origins of the circus theme go back to Chagall’s early life as a young man in the Belarusian town of Vitebsk. Chagall never forgot a particular moment when he observed a father and his young children perform on the street, hoping to earn a few pennies for bread, their efforts at acrobatic stunts clumsy yet clearly strenuous. The passing public deemed this performance more pathetic than applaudable, and Chagall sadly watched as they afterwards walked away, unappreciated and empty-handed. At that moment, and at certain other times during his career, Chagall must have pondered that this notion of performance, of an attempt to inspire and entrance, was aligned in a poetic way with the challenges of life of one who may pursue the career of an artist.
Of course, if the artist were talented, dedicated and fortunate enough as Chagall was, there might be an altogether more favorable outcome, more akin to the scene depicted in Le cirque - L'écuyère. This moment of abundant delight and applause aligns with Chagall’s own great success in art, life and love during a harmonious and abundant time in his late career. It is a celebration not only of his success, having overcome the many challenges he faced throughout his life, but a metaphorical appreciation of the richness of lived experience in all its variety. Chagall here summons the experience and spectacle of circus performance –as a vivid and exhilarating metaphor for the life he had decided to lead. The vision and dream of the circus became the very heart of Chagall’s personal mythology.
The theme of the lovers is also a highly celebrated and represented theme within Chagall’s oeuvre. Exuding romance and desire informed by his own life, the lovers represent both the youthful passion for his first wife and great love Bella, as well as theenduring and faithful love of his second wife, Valentina “Vava” Brodsky, to whom Chagall was married at the time of painting Le cirque - L'écuyère, and who would remain his devoted companion until his passing. For Chagall, love and beauty were powerful elements, forces that could only bring greater harmony to a world that appeared in need of it during his lifetime. Explaining his dedication to this cause, he said, ‘I thought that only love and uncalculating devotion towards others will lead to the greatest harmony in life and in art of which humanity has been dreaming so long. And this must, of course, be included in each utterance, in each brushstroke, and in each color’ (Chagall, quoted in Chagall: A Retrospective, ed. J. Baal-Teshuva, Westport, 1995, p. 208). In Le cirque - L'écuyère, the allegory of love and the circus come together magically and effervescently.
Paris in the early 20th century, was a circus-goer’s paradise. Having first arrived in June 1911, Chagall soon discovered the famed Cirque Médrano on the edge of Montmartre and the Cirque d’Hiver in the 11ème arrondissement. Chagall painted a notably modernist picture of a female acrobat before returning to his homeland in mid-1914. He thereby joined a long and distinguished line of painters working in France who featured the circus in their work, from Antoine Watteau–a favorite of Chagall–to Honoré Daumier, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, and among his immediate contemporaries, Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, Kees Van Dongen and Fernand Léger.
The circus subjects that Chagall developed in 1926-1930 would continue to bear fruit for the next half century of this artist’s amazingly long life, finding their pinnacle in masterpieces such as Le grand cirque (fig. 1) and Couple au cirque (fig. 2) Le cirque - L'écuyère. shares the same abundance of energy, the joyous circular arena metaphorically aligned with the cycles and seasons of life, celebrating the young couple, the lovers, underneath a radiant beacon, interchangeably the sun, moon and star. As such, it is clear to see that Chagall’s experience of life and its metaphor in the circus, as he conceived of it, were inextricably intertwined.