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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Marc Chagall.
The snow-clad village is a festive and lighthearted scene drawn from the wellspring of the artist's cherished memories of his childhood in the provincial Russia town of Vitebsk. In Chagall's later painting, he always returned fondly to his memories of Vitebsk, a child's playground, a fantasy world of happiness, in which a micro-cosmos of a magical world exists. "I found my masters in (Vitebsk), at every step, in every event. I found them among the sellers at the weekly open-air markets, among the waiters in the cafés, the housekeepers, peasants and labourers. Around them wafted that extraordinary light of freedeom that I had never seen anywhere" (M. Chagall, My Life, Paris, 1931).
Some of Chagall's best loved images - the fiddler, the accordion player, the cockerel holding a small child, circus bareback rider with her lover - cavort on the canvas against the luminescent backdrop of the wintry rustic landscape.
"With Chagall there disappears from Jewish painting that note of sorrow and gloom... Instead, there is a sheer delight in the sensuous aspect of colour and form, and frivolity, humour and wit, gleaned from keen observation and intimate knowledge." (A. Kampf, Chagall to Kitaj, London, 1990, p. 22).
The snow-clad village is a festive and lighthearted scene drawn from the wellspring of the artist's cherished memories of his childhood in the provincial Russia town of Vitebsk. In Chagall's later painting, he always returned fondly to his memories of Vitebsk, a child's playground, a fantasy world of happiness, in which a micro-cosmos of a magical world exists. "I found my masters in (Vitebsk), at every step, in every event. I found them among the sellers at the weekly open-air markets, among the waiters in the cafés, the housekeepers, peasants and labourers. Around them wafted that extraordinary light of freedeom that I had never seen anywhere" (M. Chagall, My Life, Paris, 1931).
Some of Chagall's best loved images - the fiddler, the accordion player, the cockerel holding a small child, circus bareback rider with her lover - cavort on the canvas against the luminescent backdrop of the wintry rustic landscape.
"With Chagall there disappears from Jewish painting that note of sorrow and gloom... Instead, there is a sheer delight in the sensuous aspect of colour and form, and frivolity, humour and wit, gleaned from keen observation and intimate knowledge." (A. Kampf, Chagall to Kitaj, London, 1990, p. 22).