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Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this gouache.
Le violoniste allonge is a richly textured village scene, rendered in vibrant, luminous colours typical of Chagall's later works. "Chagall had himself learnt the violin as a boy and one of his uncles was a fiddler. It was that music which cheered many a Jewish wedding and individual players featured in Chagall's work from the earliest time". (S. Compton, Chagall, London, 1985, p. 16). The elongated, reclining figure of the fiddler is garbed in bright red against the colourful panoply of shtetl life. A mother with her children, a cock, a rider with ox-drawn cart and the artist himself are disassociated on-lookers. "As in modern lyric poetry, the various images operate in isolation, severed from their usual setting, and arrange themselves as independent elements in their new environment. In this way, each element of the picture, lifted from its environment, achieves a new significance; it no longer stands only for itself as part of our visual reality, but also for 'something else'". (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1963, p. 12).
Le violoniste allonge is a richly textured village scene, rendered in vibrant, luminous colours typical of Chagall's later works. "Chagall had himself learnt the violin as a boy and one of his uncles was a fiddler. It was that music which cheered many a Jewish wedding and individual players featured in Chagall's work from the earliest time". (S. Compton, Chagall, London, 1985, p. 16). The elongated, reclining figure of the fiddler is garbed in bright red against the colourful panoply of shtetl life. A mother with her children, a cock, a rider with ox-drawn cart and the artist himself are disassociated on-lookers. "As in modern lyric poetry, the various images operate in isolation, severed from their usual setting, and arrange themselves as independent elements in their new environment. In this way, each element of the picture, lifted from its environment, achieves a new significance; it no longer stands only for itself as part of our visual reality, but also for 'something else'". (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1963, p. 12).