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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Chagall.
Musicians dancing in the streets of Chagall's native town Vitebsk is one of the artist's many childhood memories which he revived throughout his oeuvre. In Les musiciens du mariage, Chagall draws most of the viewer's attention to the central violinist with the blue jacket, recalling Chagall's emblematic works depicting the violinist as the main figure, such as in Le Violoniste of 1911-1913 (Meyer, p. 198; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) and Le Violoniste Vert of 1923-1924 (Meyer, p. 295, Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York).
In the Jewish world of White Russia, the violinist was a significant figure who played his music in any circumstances, both at weddings and funerals, in taverns and in the streets. In this drawing, the central violinist leads his fellow musicians to perform for a wedding, discretely depicted in the background of the gouache. The matrimonial couple, another Chagallesque leit motiv, symbolises peace, happiness and tenderness, which is celebrated here by music and embodied through the vibrant touches of gem-like colours of the composition.
Already in 1911, Chagall had explored a similar theme in his painting La noce (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; fig. 1), and later placed it at the centre of his monumental project for the Jewish Theatre in Moscow of 1920, depicting a frieze of the nuptial ceremony flanked with four panels showing the allegorical figures of Music, Theatre, Dance and Literature. The recurring theme of weddings celebrated through music finds its roots in Hassidism, which Chagall knew well having been brought up in a Hassidic family in Vitebsk. One of the main Hassidic beliefs was that the movement of the body could lead to the movement of the soul, and therefore dancing could allow Man to communicate more easily with God.
In Les musicians du marriage, it seems that even animals are invited to the celebration of the matrimonial union: the hybrid figure, half-goat, half-human, appears to join in to the performance in the foreground. Chagall promotes not only the violonist's transcendent power through music, but also the almost magical effect of music breaking through the boundaries between the animal and the human worlds.
(fig. 1) Chagall, La Noce, 1911. Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris.
Musicians dancing in the streets of Chagall's native town Vitebsk is one of the artist's many childhood memories which he revived throughout his oeuvre. In Les musiciens du mariage, Chagall draws most of the viewer's attention to the central violinist with the blue jacket, recalling Chagall's emblematic works depicting the violinist as the main figure, such as in Le Violoniste of 1911-1913 (Meyer, p. 198; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) and Le Violoniste Vert of 1923-1924 (Meyer, p. 295, Salomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York).
In the Jewish world of White Russia, the violinist was a significant figure who played his music in any circumstances, both at weddings and funerals, in taverns and in the streets. In this drawing, the central violinist leads his fellow musicians to perform for a wedding, discretely depicted in the background of the gouache. The matrimonial couple, another Chagallesque leit motiv, symbolises peace, happiness and tenderness, which is celebrated here by music and embodied through the vibrant touches of gem-like colours of the composition.
Already in 1911, Chagall had explored a similar theme in his painting La noce (Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; fig. 1), and later placed it at the centre of his monumental project for the Jewish Theatre in Moscow of 1920, depicting a frieze of the nuptial ceremony flanked with four panels showing the allegorical figures of Music, Theatre, Dance and Literature. The recurring theme of weddings celebrated through music finds its roots in Hassidism, which Chagall knew well having been brought up in a Hassidic family in Vitebsk. One of the main Hassidic beliefs was that the movement of the body could lead to the movement of the soul, and therefore dancing could allow Man to communicate more easily with God.
In Les musicians du marriage, it seems that even animals are invited to the celebration of the matrimonial union: the hybrid figure, half-goat, half-human, appears to join in to the performance in the foreground. Chagall promotes not only the violonist's transcendent power through music, but also the almost magical effect of music breaking through the boundaries between the animal and the human worlds.
(fig. 1) Chagall, La Noce, 1911. Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Paris.