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拍品專文
This gouache is the initial study for the large oil painting Dédié à ma fiancée, which Chagall painted in Paris at the end of 1911 (Meyer, p. 133). Jean-Michel Foray described this study as "a small sketch in pencil and gouache, executed some months previously..." (in Chagall connu et inconnu, exh. cat., Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 2003, p. 119). This sketch contains most of the important elements seen in the final painting, which Chagall subsequently refined, with some alterations, in a second larger (61 x 44.5 cm.) gouache (The Philadelphia Museum of Art), which he painted before undertaking the large canvas.
Both studies were done in the rooms at 18 impasse du Maine that Chagall first occupied after arriving in Paris in August 1910. In late 1911 he moved to La Ruche ("The Beehive"), a building more formally known as the Rotonde, which had been erected for the 1900 Exposition Universelle and thereafter converted into a warren of artist's studios. Among his neighbours were fellow Russians Soutine, Kikoine and Kremegne; Léger was friendly with the Russian painters, and worked there as well. The painting Dédié à ma fiancée was the first major work that Chagall completed in these new working quarters. Amazingly, Chagall claimed to have painted this large and complicated composition in a single night, a feat no doubt made possible by having the earlier studies at hand. Franz Meyer described the painting: "The handling matches the subject in its unbridled violence. There is no neatly painted surface to mask the spontaneity of the first nervous brushstrokes. The whole vibrates with a febrile excitement. The artist calls it 'a sort of bacchanal, like those by Rubens, only more abstract.' Yet not sensual, but rather 'somewhat mystical'" (in Chagall: Life and Work, New York, 1963, p. 150).
Sidney Alexander has written, "So, nightly at La Ruche [Chagall] wrestled like Jacob with the angel. 'My lamp burned and I with it'" (Marc Chagall, A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 125). Bella Rosenfeld, Chagall's beloved, whom he met in Russia in 1909, was thousands of miles away, and despite the temptation of a liason with the looser women of Paris, the artist remained faithful to her. Dédié à ma fiancée comes across as a feverish sexual fantasy, centred on wild thoughts of Bella, in which Chagall has transformed himself into lust-driven, faunesque creature, with the head of a goat, and the robe-clad body of a man. This is the first instance in his oeuvre of such a fantastical, hybrid personage. Foray has noted that Chagall's inspiration for this creature may possibly be traced to illuminators of the late 13th and 14th century Jewish Bible, who, drawing on images of the fantastical medieval bestiary, often represented figures which were part man, part animal. The Hasidic sect of Judaism revived this tradition in Germany during the 19th century. "Whatever the source," Foray concluded, "such representations within the Parisian artistic milieu in 1911 seemed strange. It was for this reason that Apollinaire referred to the art of Chagall as 'sauvage'" (op.cit.).
Both studies were done in the rooms at 18 impasse du Maine that Chagall first occupied after arriving in Paris in August 1910. In late 1911 he moved to La Ruche ("The Beehive"), a building more formally known as the Rotonde, which had been erected for the 1900 Exposition Universelle and thereafter converted into a warren of artist's studios. Among his neighbours were fellow Russians Soutine, Kikoine and Kremegne; Léger was friendly with the Russian painters, and worked there as well. The painting Dédié à ma fiancée was the first major work that Chagall completed in these new working quarters. Amazingly, Chagall claimed to have painted this large and complicated composition in a single night, a feat no doubt made possible by having the earlier studies at hand. Franz Meyer described the painting: "The handling matches the subject in its unbridled violence. There is no neatly painted surface to mask the spontaneity of the first nervous brushstrokes. The whole vibrates with a febrile excitement. The artist calls it 'a sort of bacchanal, like those by Rubens, only more abstract.' Yet not sensual, but rather 'somewhat mystical'" (in Chagall: Life and Work, New York, 1963, p. 150).
Sidney Alexander has written, "So, nightly at La Ruche [Chagall] wrestled like Jacob with the angel. 'My lamp burned and I with it'" (Marc Chagall, A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 125). Bella Rosenfeld, Chagall's beloved, whom he met in Russia in 1909, was thousands of miles away, and despite the temptation of a liason with the looser women of Paris, the artist remained faithful to her. Dédié à ma fiancée comes across as a feverish sexual fantasy, centred on wild thoughts of Bella, in which Chagall has transformed himself into lust-driven, faunesque creature, with the head of a goat, and the robe-clad body of a man. This is the first instance in his oeuvre of such a fantastical, hybrid personage. Foray has noted that Chagall's inspiration for this creature may possibly be traced to illuminators of the late 13th and 14th century Jewish Bible, who, drawing on images of the fantastical medieval bestiary, often represented figures which were part man, part animal. The Hasidic sect of Judaism revived this tradition in Germany during the 19th century. "Whatever the source," Foray concluded, "such representations within the Parisian artistic milieu in 1911 seemed strange. It was for this reason that Apollinaire referred to the art of Chagall as 'sauvage'" (op.cit.).