拍品專文
In 1927, Vollard commissioned Chagall to illustrated La Fontaine's Fables following the "Cirque Vollard" series. Chagall "wanted to treat the subject in gouache and a whole team of etchers, including several winners of the Prix de Rome, under the leadership of Maurice Potin, were to have prepared the plates after the fashion of eighteenth-century coloured prints. Chagall worked on the gouaches during 1926 and 1927." (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, London, 1961, p. 348).
During this period, he felt he should travel in the countryside to reacquaint himself with the rural life of animals and plants. He and his family stayed at Mourillon near Toulon and later at Chambon in Auvergne. Chagall was overwhelmed by the bright light of the south and this is evident in his subsequent use of brighter and luminous colours.
"At Chambon Chagall did some thirty gouaches for the "Fables" in which he developed the whole range of his brushwork with particular magnificence. The colour fills the forms, streams in broad arteries and condenses in cloudy complexes...The brush designs fluent contours and fine hatchings; it dabs, thrusts, and sprays the pigment on the sheet. Thus the painting becomes lustrous or dull, rough or smooth, damp or dry, feathery or leathery."
"It is not the moral of the fable that Chagall brings to the fore, but the familiar relation to animals that is echoed in the text. Since his first stay in Paris, Chagall's animal symbolism was based on the age-old relation of man to beast; now instead, the primitive sense of the animal story transpires through the narrative as symbolic idom...Animal stories are not the only themes of Chagall's illustration of the 'Fables'. About one third of the total deal with La Fontaine's human tales in verse...In some cases the models were probably the peasants of Chambon..."
"But Chagall's pleasure in sensual power matched his own joviality and eagerness to enjoy life. The liberty and success he found in France, the sense of his own powers, and the discovery of a joy-giving world of light and colour, lent his life a vital elation that makes him say today: 'That was the happiest time of my life.'" (op. cit., p. 350).
Sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Marc Chagall dated Saint-Paul le 4 mai 1993
During this period, he felt he should travel in the countryside to reacquaint himself with the rural life of animals and plants. He and his family stayed at Mourillon near Toulon and later at Chambon in Auvergne. Chagall was overwhelmed by the bright light of the south and this is evident in his subsequent use of brighter and luminous colours.
"At Chambon Chagall did some thirty gouaches for the "Fables" in which he developed the whole range of his brushwork with particular magnificence. The colour fills the forms, streams in broad arteries and condenses in cloudy complexes...The brush designs fluent contours and fine hatchings; it dabs, thrusts, and sprays the pigment on the sheet. Thus the painting becomes lustrous or dull, rough or smooth, damp or dry, feathery or leathery."
"It is not the moral of the fable that Chagall brings to the fore, but the familiar relation to animals that is echoed in the text. Since his first stay in Paris, Chagall's animal symbolism was based on the age-old relation of man to beast; now instead, the primitive sense of the animal story transpires through the narrative as symbolic idom...Animal stories are not the only themes of Chagall's illustration of the 'Fables'. About one third of the total deal with La Fontaine's human tales in verse...In some cases the models were probably the peasants of Chambon..."
"But Chagall's pleasure in sensual power matched his own joviality and eagerness to enjoy life. The liberty and success he found in France, the sense of his own powers, and the discovery of a joy-giving world of light and colour, lent his life a vital elation that makes him say today: 'That was the happiest time of my life.'" (op. cit., p. 350).
Sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Marc Chagall dated Saint-Paul le 4 mai 1993