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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from David McNeil.
Le rêve epitomises Chagall's dream world where everything is possible. Whether it be inspiring himself from contemporary artistic trends or selecting elements from reality and from his perception of the world around him, Chagall combines all these to shape his own myth.
In Le rêve, the man on a chair perched on a tree, is identified as the 'dreamer', whose dream consists of Vitebsk under the moon, as shown in the background. This echoes Chagall's own memories which haunted his mind and his art all his life. Although Chagall writes in My Life, 'Vitebsk, I'm forsaking you. Stay on your own with your herrings!' when he leaves for Paris in 1910, he does not mean it. Indeed when he returned back to Russia in 1914, he realised his attachment to his origins and he produced his series of 'documents' (see lot 581). He further betrayed his eternal love for his hometown by regularly including a small iconic Vitebsk-like village in the background of his compositions.
DIVIDER:
Marc Chagall in front of the Fontaine de l'Observatoire, Paris, June 1911. Archives Marc et Ida Chagall, Paris; ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2007.
Le rêve epitomises Chagall's dream world where everything is possible. Whether it be inspiring himself from contemporary artistic trends or selecting elements from reality and from his perception of the world around him, Chagall combines all these to shape his own myth.
In Le rêve, the man on a chair perched on a tree, is identified as the 'dreamer', whose dream consists of Vitebsk under the moon, as shown in the background. This echoes Chagall's own memories which haunted his mind and his art all his life. Although Chagall writes in My Life, 'Vitebsk, I'm forsaking you. Stay on your own with your herrings!' when he leaves for Paris in 1910, he does not mean it. Indeed when he returned back to Russia in 1914, he realised his attachment to his origins and he produced his series of 'documents' (see lot 581). He further betrayed his eternal love for his hometown by regularly including a small iconic Vitebsk-like village in the background of his compositions.
DIVIDER:
Marc Chagall in front of the Fontaine de l'Observatoire, Paris, June 1911. Archives Marc et Ida Chagall, Paris; ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London, 2007.