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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from David McNeil.
Executed possibly during the summer of 1908, this work is one of the rare pen and ink drawings of that period. With a few lines sketched down on the paper to create volume and contrast, Chagall succeeds in capturing a snapshot of life in the suburbs of Vitebsk. Two figures in the background seem to be having a conversation, whilst behind the fortification the busy industrial activity is referred to with the train at the horizon and with the boats carrying goods to the harbour.
The wooden wall diagonally divides the drawing between the dynamism of trade on the right and peacefulness of rural life on the left. For Bella Chagall, the latter evoked a sense of end of the world as she writes, 'When it is not clear from where are coming and where are going the trains, when everything is a source of astonishment, that the river flows from somewhere, that the sun rises from one side and disappears at the other in the evening... Is it the beginning or the end of the world, Vitebsk?' (B. Chagall, Erste Begegnung, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1971, p. 186).
DIVIDER:
Chagall and his family. Archives Marc et Ida Chagall, Paris; © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007.
Executed possibly during the summer of 1908, this work is one of the rare pen and ink drawings of that period. With a few lines sketched down on the paper to create volume and contrast, Chagall succeeds in capturing a snapshot of life in the suburbs of Vitebsk. Two figures in the background seem to be having a conversation, whilst behind the fortification the busy industrial activity is referred to with the train at the horizon and with the boats carrying goods to the harbour.
The wooden wall diagonally divides the drawing between the dynamism of trade on the right and peacefulness of rural life on the left. For Bella Chagall, the latter evoked a sense of end of the world as she writes, 'When it is not clear from where are coming and where are going the trains, when everything is a source of astonishment, that the river flows from somewhere, that the sun rises from one side and disappears at the other in the evening... Is it the beginning or the end of the world, Vitebsk?' (B. Chagall, Erste Begegnung, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1971, p. 186).
DIVIDER:
Chagall and his family. Archives Marc et Ida Chagall, Paris; © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2007.