Lot Essay
Chagall's return to Vitebsk took place only a few weeks before the First World War. After having his first successful solo exhibition at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin, Chagall decided to go back to Vitebsk to attend his sister's wedding and see his beloved Bella Rosenfeld. He only intended to stay there for a short time. However, the War, followed by the Bolshevik Revolution, forced him to stay in Vitebsk and Russia for the next eight years.
Although Chagall initially felt lost in Vitebsk, the joy of being back in his native town with Bella at his side inspired him to paint and draw everything he saw and encountered, which amounted to about fifty to sixty works. Many of these works were inspired by Bella whilst others, as here, were based on happy memories of his childhood in Vitebsk. "These pictures, as Fannina W. Halle says, express the joy of the prodigal son, of reunion and recovery after a long separation. And besides that: there is also the joy of the discoverer who observes this 'new world' with entirely new eyes. And who now greets and embraces it and pieces together its fragment with the same glowing passion with which previously in Paris he had disintegrated its forms into a thousand pieces." (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, London, 1964, p. 217).
It was not until three years after his return to France in 1923 that Chagall began to rework some of his Russian period subjects. Franz Meyer says of these second Vitebsk pictures, "Mostly the rhythm of the composition is freer, the form more open and laxer...In general the colour now becomes livelier and more radiant. It was this new force of colour that finally deprived the old motifs of their significance."
"Many of the small paintings are akin to the first etchings for Les Ames Mortes. Indeed, it was Chagall's preoccupation with Gogol's novel that brought the Russian small town motifs to the surface again...In the new Russian scenes the 'earthiness' does not signify heaviness or oppression. It expresses instead a new love of life, kindled by the smell, the taste and touch of things." (op. cit., p. 333-334).
Although Chagall initially felt lost in Vitebsk, the joy of being back in his native town with Bella at his side inspired him to paint and draw everything he saw and encountered, which amounted to about fifty to sixty works. Many of these works were inspired by Bella whilst others, as here, were based on happy memories of his childhood in Vitebsk. "These pictures, as Fannina W. Halle says, express the joy of the prodigal son, of reunion and recovery after a long separation. And besides that: there is also the joy of the discoverer who observes this 'new world' with entirely new eyes. And who now greets and embraces it and pieces together its fragment with the same glowing passion with which previously in Paris he had disintegrated its forms into a thousand pieces." (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, London, 1964, p. 217).
It was not until three years after his return to France in 1923 that Chagall began to rework some of his Russian period subjects. Franz Meyer says of these second Vitebsk pictures, "Mostly the rhythm of the composition is freer, the form more open and laxer...In general the colour now becomes livelier and more radiant. It was this new force of colour that finally deprived the old motifs of their significance."
"Many of the small paintings are akin to the first etchings for Les Ames Mortes. Indeed, it was Chagall's preoccupation with Gogol's novel that brought the Russian small town motifs to the surface again...In the new Russian scenes the 'earthiness' does not signify heaviness or oppression. It expresses instead a new love of life, kindled by the smell, the taste and touch of things." (op. cit., p. 333-334).