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Lot Essay
'Painting seemed to me like a window through which I could have taken flight towards another world.' — Marc Chagall
Out of the quiet dusk of a deepening night, a cast of figures and animals appear in delicate harmony within a dream-like landscape, their forms described in soft contours and vivid washes of colour. Painted in 1975, at the height of Marc Chagall’s late period and right after the Musée Chagall’s opening in the South of France, Pastorale illustrates the artist’s complete command of his mature painterly language: the translucent glazes and softly diffused colours exemplify the luminous refinement of his style during this period of his career. The painting’s importance was affirmed when Pastorale was selected for the Musée du Louvre’s 1977 exhibition celebrating Chagall’s 90th birthday, where it was shown alongside other major late works, including Les gens du voyage, which is currently held in collection of Centre Pompidou. Pastorale stands as a lyrical testament to Chagall’s enduring legacy as modern art’s great poet of colour.
Colour lies at the heart of Chagall’s practice, and in Pastorale it embodies a lifetime of memory, renewal, and emotional resonance. Though central to his art from the beginning, colour took on a profound new intensity after the Second World War, when Chagall settled in Saint‑Paul‑de‑Vence with his second wife, Valentina ‘Vava’ Brodsky, and encountered the Mediterranean’s radiant light. As he recalled: ‘As I got nearer to the Côte d’Azur, I experienced a feeling of regeneration, something I hadn’t felt since childhood. The smell of flowers, a sort of new energy poured through me… Near to Nice already, I felt that numerous artists had come here, that it was a place where it was possible to establish oneself, to set oneself up. In such a town, you could write music, poetry, paint pictures… It was here I stayed. Perhaps I am feeling the years, but anyway this place has become to me like my hometown Vitebsk. As if I was rejuvenated, and that I was waiting for something. And this flower-filled world coloured my new life’ (quoted in Marc Chagall. Rétrospective 1908-1985, exh. cat., Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 2015, p. 48).
'In our life there is a single colour, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love.' — Marc Chagall
This sense of rebirth infuses the palette of Pastorale: the glowing greens, yellows, and reds carry the warmth of the Côte d’Azur. During this period of his career, Chagall adopted a technique that employed thin layers of oil paint, transparent washes, and gentle tonal shifts that let light slowly permeate the surface of his paintings, giving them an airy brilliance. In Pastorale, colours move softly from red to green and yellow to violet, creating a rhythmic pulse enriched by delicate layers of paint. Beneath these translucent veils, undertones of beige, aqua, and earthy green glow faintly, producing an atmospheric quality that echoes the mature methods he refined alongside his major stained-glass commissions for the Hadassah Medical Center, Notre-Dame de Reims, and the Sarrebourg Chapelle des Cordeliers.
'One should never paint a picture on the basis of symbols. Rather than starting out from a symbol, one should end with one, for symbolism is inevitable. Any absolute authentic work of art automatically possess its symbolism.' — Marc Chagall
The green violinist – possibly a symbolic self-portrait of the artist – floats freely above the scene. As a recurring figure since the artist’s early works, the violinist is typically depicted in traditional costume and set against the landscapes of Chagall’s native Vitebsk. Here he summons the musical world of the artist’s childhood, where song was inextricably intertwined with identity and faith, holding a vital presence in the Hasidic Jewish ceremonies and festivals. Beside the violinist reclines his lover, perhaps inspired by Vava, whose presence quietly anchors many of his later works. Besides the couple rises a bright yellow moon, and a rooster perches atop a halo-like red sun. As a long-standing and recognizable element in Chagall’s pictorial vocabulary, the rooster suggests virility, vigilance and awakening.
The Saint‑Paul‑de‑Vence landscape likewise becomes an integral part of the composition rather than a distant backdrop. The townscape stretches across the horizon in a broad sweep. To the right of the violinist, the distinctive silhouette of the fourteenth‑century Tour de la Fondule rises prominently, offering a grounded counterpoint to the weightless figures above. In the upper right corner, a bouquet‑like flowering tree adds a note of vitality.
Marc Chagall’s Pastorale distils a lifetime of artistic exploration into a single, floating vision where colour becomes memory and artistic mastery. His chromatic language, whether brushed across canvas or glowing through stained glass, evokes a world felt as tender and musical, carried with a weightlessness that hovers just beyond reality.
Out of the quiet dusk of a deepening night, a cast of figures and animals appear in delicate harmony within a dream-like landscape, their forms described in soft contours and vivid washes of colour. Painted in 1975, at the height of Marc Chagall’s late period and right after the Musée Chagall’s opening in the South of France, Pastorale illustrates the artist’s complete command of his mature painterly language: the translucent glazes and softly diffused colours exemplify the luminous refinement of his style during this period of his career. The painting’s importance was affirmed when Pastorale was selected for the Musée du Louvre’s 1977 exhibition celebrating Chagall’s 90th birthday, where it was shown alongside other major late works, including Les gens du voyage, which is currently held in collection of Centre Pompidou. Pastorale stands as a lyrical testament to Chagall’s enduring legacy as modern art’s great poet of colour.
Colour lies at the heart of Chagall’s practice, and in Pastorale it embodies a lifetime of memory, renewal, and emotional resonance. Though central to his art from the beginning, colour took on a profound new intensity after the Second World War, when Chagall settled in Saint‑Paul‑de‑Vence with his second wife, Valentina ‘Vava’ Brodsky, and encountered the Mediterranean’s radiant light. As he recalled: ‘As I got nearer to the Côte d’Azur, I experienced a feeling of regeneration, something I hadn’t felt since childhood. The smell of flowers, a sort of new energy poured through me… Near to Nice already, I felt that numerous artists had come here, that it was a place where it was possible to establish oneself, to set oneself up. In such a town, you could write music, poetry, paint pictures… It was here I stayed. Perhaps I am feeling the years, but anyway this place has become to me like my hometown Vitebsk. As if I was rejuvenated, and that I was waiting for something. And this flower-filled world coloured my new life’ (quoted in Marc Chagall. Rétrospective 1908-1985, exh. cat., Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 2015, p. 48).
'In our life there is a single colour, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love.' — Marc Chagall
This sense of rebirth infuses the palette of Pastorale: the glowing greens, yellows, and reds carry the warmth of the Côte d’Azur. During this period of his career, Chagall adopted a technique that employed thin layers of oil paint, transparent washes, and gentle tonal shifts that let light slowly permeate the surface of his paintings, giving them an airy brilliance. In Pastorale, colours move softly from red to green and yellow to violet, creating a rhythmic pulse enriched by delicate layers of paint. Beneath these translucent veils, undertones of beige, aqua, and earthy green glow faintly, producing an atmospheric quality that echoes the mature methods he refined alongside his major stained-glass commissions for the Hadassah Medical Center, Notre-Dame de Reims, and the Sarrebourg Chapelle des Cordeliers.
'One should never paint a picture on the basis of symbols. Rather than starting out from a symbol, one should end with one, for symbolism is inevitable. Any absolute authentic work of art automatically possess its symbolism.' — Marc Chagall
The green violinist – possibly a symbolic self-portrait of the artist – floats freely above the scene. As a recurring figure since the artist’s early works, the violinist is typically depicted in traditional costume and set against the landscapes of Chagall’s native Vitebsk. Here he summons the musical world of the artist’s childhood, where song was inextricably intertwined with identity and faith, holding a vital presence in the Hasidic Jewish ceremonies and festivals. Beside the violinist reclines his lover, perhaps inspired by Vava, whose presence quietly anchors many of his later works. Besides the couple rises a bright yellow moon, and a rooster perches atop a halo-like red sun. As a long-standing and recognizable element in Chagall’s pictorial vocabulary, the rooster suggests virility, vigilance and awakening.
The Saint‑Paul‑de‑Vence landscape likewise becomes an integral part of the composition rather than a distant backdrop. The townscape stretches across the horizon in a broad sweep. To the right of the violinist, the distinctive silhouette of the fourteenth‑century Tour de la Fondule rises prominently, offering a grounded counterpoint to the weightless figures above. In the upper right corner, a bouquet‑like flowering tree adds a note of vitality.
Marc Chagall’s Pastorale distils a lifetime of artistic exploration into a single, floating vision where colour becomes memory and artistic mastery. His chromatic language, whether brushed across canvas or glowing through stained glass, evokes a world felt as tender and musical, carried with a weightlessness that hovers just beyond reality.