The acrobat with the violin first appeared in Chagall's early oeuvre in Russia and continued to occur frequently in his later imagery, alongside clowns, lovers, circus animals, and lovers. He painted still-lifes of flowers throughout his life, although from the 1930s onwards the colours become bolder and brighter, bathed in the light of the Midi. "It was in Toulon in 1924, Chagall recalls, that the charm of French flowers first struck him. He claims that he had not known bouquets of flowers in Russia or at least they were not as common as in France.. He said that when he painted a bouquet it was as if he were painting a landscape. It represented France to him..Flowers, especially mixed bouquets of tiny blossoms, offer a variety of delicate colour combinations and a fund of texture contrasts which were beginning to hold Chagall's attention more and more."(J. Johnson Sweeney, Marc Chagall, New York, 1946, p. 56)