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Lot Essay
Le Portier est un mélange de simplicité terrienne et de fortes connotations magiques caractéristiques de l'oeuvre de Chagall. A l'éveil de la Révolution russe, sentant que la place des arts serait de moins en moins considérée, Chagall quitta son pays natal. En 1923, il s'installa à Paris où il chercha, en vain, à retrouver certaines de ses oeuvres de jeunesse vendues aux marchands tels que Herwath Walden ou Ambroise Vollard. Il décida donc de recréer la plupart de ses oeuvres à l'aide de sa mémoire. Celles-ci ne sont pas des répliques mais plutôt des oeuvres de re-interpréation qui reflètent à la fois sa nouveauté au contact de ses nouvelles expériences mais aussi des regains de nostalgiques de sa vie passée. Le Portier rappele l'aquarelle (fig. 1) qu'il fit une décennie plus tôt, l'homme tenant un balai dans sa main est maintenant plus agé; sont également présents la maison dans le fond ainsi que la barrière ouverte de la ferme. La présente composition offre un sens de fantaisie lyrique plus prononcé révélant l'apport incontestable de son installation parisienne.
Le Portier combines rural simplicity with the idiosyncratic and magical sense of myth and wonder so distinctive in Chagall's work. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, as he perceived with increasing disappointment that the arts were not benefitting as he had hoped and intended from the overturn, Chagall left his native country. In 1923 he settled in Paris, where he sought to recover some of his earlier works from Herwath Walden and Ambroise Vollard among others, but these attempts met with little success. He therefore set out to recreate many of those works from memory. These were not replicas, but rather re-imaginations -- works that reflected his new, nostalgic perspective. Le Portier recalls his watercolour of a decade earlier (fig. 1) -- the man with his broom in hand, now somewhat aged, the house in the background and the open gate to the farm are all present yet now the composition is infused with a sense of lyrical whimsy.
(fig. 1) Marc Chagall, Le Portier, 1915.
Collection privée, Leningrad.
X.D.R.
Le Portier combines rural simplicity with the idiosyncratic and magical sense of myth and wonder so distinctive in Chagall's work. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, as he perceived with increasing disappointment that the arts were not benefitting as he had hoped and intended from the overturn, Chagall left his native country. In 1923 he settled in Paris, where he sought to recover some of his earlier works from Herwath Walden and Ambroise Vollard among others, but these attempts met with little success. He therefore set out to recreate many of those works from memory. These were not replicas, but rather re-imaginations -- works that reflected his new, nostalgic perspective. Le Portier recalls his watercolour of a decade earlier (fig. 1) -- the man with his broom in hand, now somewhat aged, the house in the background and the open gate to the farm are all present yet now the composition is infused with a sense of lyrical whimsy.
(fig. 1) Marc Chagall, Le Portier, 1915.
Collection privée, Leningrad.
X.D.R.