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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Marc Chagall, numbered N. 96080 and dated Saint-Paul, le 4 Juin
1996.
Marc Chagall's early association with the poets Jules Superville, Paul Eluard and René Schwob fostered his particular gift for poetic imagery. In his compositions various motifs traverse the picture plane without any pretence to rational order, instead becoming words in a painted poem. 'I brought my objects with me from Russia. Paris shed light on them', as the artist commented (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, London, 1964, p. 100).
In Les Mariés, all of the myths that Chagall delighted in are present: a Russian village vignette, farmyard animals and an angel as a bearer of amorous tidings swirl to the beat of accompanying musicians. The imagery of a wedding couple was likewise a recurring theme in his work and a visual reference to the love he and his first wife, Bella Rosenfeld, had shared. It is also a reference to a story Bella recounted in her memoirs, in which she remembered as a child watching a wedding take place in her local village. She described the bride as being 'like a bright cloud first and foremost a long white dress that trailed along the ground like something living, the whole covered by an airy veil. Through it, as through glass, the bride herself seemed faraway' (quoted in S. Compton, Chagall, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Art, London, 1985, p. 222).
In essence, Chagall turned the depiction of reality upside down in order to give greater meaning to those things inherent within. As George Schmidt stated, 'Miraculous events in Chagall's work are not superimposed upon it. On the contrary they are central to its creation' (quoted in A. Kamensky, Chagall, The Russian Years 1907-1922, New York, 1988, p. 92).
1996.
Marc Chagall's early association with the poets Jules Superville, Paul Eluard and René Schwob fostered his particular gift for poetic imagery. In his compositions various motifs traverse the picture plane without any pretence to rational order, instead becoming words in a painted poem. 'I brought my objects with me from Russia. Paris shed light on them', as the artist commented (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, London, 1964, p. 100).
In Les Mariés, all of the myths that Chagall delighted in are present: a Russian village vignette, farmyard animals and an angel as a bearer of amorous tidings swirl to the beat of accompanying musicians. The imagery of a wedding couple was likewise a recurring theme in his work and a visual reference to the love he and his first wife, Bella Rosenfeld, had shared. It is also a reference to a story Bella recounted in her memoirs, in which she remembered as a child watching a wedding take place in her local village. She described the bride as being 'like a bright cloud first and foremost a long white dress that trailed along the ground like something living, the whole covered by an airy veil. Through it, as through glass, the bride herself seemed faraway' (quoted in S. Compton, Chagall, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Art, London, 1985, p. 222).
In essence, Chagall turned the depiction of reality upside down in order to give greater meaning to those things inherent within. As George Schmidt stated, 'Miraculous events in Chagall's work are not superimposed upon it. On the contrary they are central to its creation' (quoted in A. Kamensky, Chagall, The Russian Years 1907-1922, New York, 1988, p. 92).