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Lot Essay
In the midst of the circus ring, a couple embrace, the titular “red princess,” attended by musicians, animals, a horseback rider, and a man proffering the show’s star a blossoming bouquet. With La princesse rouge au cirque, painted in 1980 and held in the same private collection for just under forty years, Marc Chagall returned to one of his most beloved and important motifs, the circus. Beneath the glowing lights a parade of figures, color, light, and life unfolded, allowing Chagall to portray the cavalcade of characters that he had accumulated through the course of his life, each one invested with a personal and often autobiographical resonance for the artist.
Color is the pulse of a work of art.
Marc Chagall
“These clowns, bareback riders, and acrobats have made themselves at home in my visions,” Chagall explained on the occasion of an exhibition of his circus paintings in 1981. “With them I can move toward new horizons. Lured by their colors and make-up, I can dream of painting new psychic distortions” (Le Cirque, trans. Patsy Southgate, in Le Cirque: Paintings 1969-80, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1981, n.p.).
La princesse rouge au cirque stands as a reminiscence, as with so many of Chagall’s favorite subjects, of his past. His fascination with the world of traveling players had begun as a young man in Vitebsk, where he recalled seeing a family of acrobats performing in the street, attracting a small crowd as they executed their modest repertoire of moves. The host of animals together with the fiddler and pipe player are all figures that derived from Chagall’s early years in Russia. Though he would spend much of his life in France, these motifs populated his art, a central part of his artistic identity. The couple in the center of the composition could also be seen to have a personal resonance. A beloved motif in Chagall’s work, these embracing figures were often stand-ins for the artist and his first wife, his childhood love and muse, Bella, who had died in 1944. Though at this time, Chagall was happily married to Valentina “Vava” Brodksy, his love with Bella ran like a continuous thread throughout his painting.
When he moved to Paris in 1910, Chagall was immersed in a new world of dazzling entertainment. Like many of his contemporaries, Chagall frequented the famed Cirque Médrano, situated on the edge of Montmartre, and the Cirque d’Hiver in the 11ème arrondissement. Like the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists before him, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Chagall, together with his contemporaries, Pablo Picasso, Kees van Dongen and Fernand Léger, used this subject as a means to explore novel subjects and innovative color. In 1927, the famed dealer, Ambroise Vollard, commissioned Chagall to create a suite of gouaches on the theme of the circus, offering the artist use of his personal box at the Cirque d’Hiver. For the rest of his life, this theme would reappear in Chagall’s work, the vivid visions of light and color remaining forever impressed upon his imagination.
For Chagall, however, the circus was more than simply a means for artistic experimentation, it was a metaphor for life. As he explained, “For me a circus is a magic show that appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing. It is profound... These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have themselves at home in my visions... It is a magic word, circus, a timeless dancing game where tears and smiles, the play of arms and legs take the form of a great art...” (ibid.).
Color is the pulse of a work of art.
Marc Chagall
“These clowns, bareback riders, and acrobats have made themselves at home in my visions,” Chagall explained on the occasion of an exhibition of his circus paintings in 1981. “With them I can move toward new horizons. Lured by their colors and make-up, I can dream of painting new psychic distortions” (Le Cirque, trans. Patsy Southgate, in Le Cirque: Paintings 1969-80, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1981, n.p.).
La princesse rouge au cirque stands as a reminiscence, as with so many of Chagall’s favorite subjects, of his past. His fascination with the world of traveling players had begun as a young man in Vitebsk, where he recalled seeing a family of acrobats performing in the street, attracting a small crowd as they executed their modest repertoire of moves. The host of animals together with the fiddler and pipe player are all figures that derived from Chagall’s early years in Russia. Though he would spend much of his life in France, these motifs populated his art, a central part of his artistic identity. The couple in the center of the composition could also be seen to have a personal resonance. A beloved motif in Chagall’s work, these embracing figures were often stand-ins for the artist and his first wife, his childhood love and muse, Bella, who had died in 1944. Though at this time, Chagall was happily married to Valentina “Vava” Brodksy, his love with Bella ran like a continuous thread throughout his painting.
When he moved to Paris in 1910, Chagall was immersed in a new world of dazzling entertainment. Like many of his contemporaries, Chagall frequented the famed Cirque Médrano, situated on the edge of Montmartre, and the Cirque d’Hiver in the 11ème arrondissement. Like the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists before him, Edgar Degas, Georges Seurat, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Chagall, together with his contemporaries, Pablo Picasso, Kees van Dongen and Fernand Léger, used this subject as a means to explore novel subjects and innovative color. In 1927, the famed dealer, Ambroise Vollard, commissioned Chagall to create a suite of gouaches on the theme of the circus, offering the artist use of his personal box at the Cirque d’Hiver. For the rest of his life, this theme would reappear in Chagall’s work, the vivid visions of light and color remaining forever impressed upon his imagination.
For Chagall, however, the circus was more than simply a means for artistic experimentation, it was a metaphor for life. As he explained, “For me a circus is a magic show that appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing. It is profound... These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have themselves at home in my visions... It is a magic word, circus, a timeless dancing game where tears and smiles, the play of arms and legs take the form of a great art...” (ibid.).