3267 - MARC CHAGALL

MARC CHAGALL (Vitebsk 1887–1985 Saint-Paul-de-Vence) Le couple et le bouquet au-dessus de la ville. 1979. Oil, tempera and ink on hardboard. Signed and dated lower right: Marc / Chagall / 1979. 54 × 46 cm. Certificate: Comité Marc Chagall, Saint-Paul, 24 June 1993. Provenance: - Private collection, Paris. - Auction Galerie Koller, Zurich, 19 November 1993, lot 3032. - Private collection, Switzerland/Italy, acquired at the above auction and passed by inheritance to the present owners. Painted in 1979, ‘Le couple et le bouquet au-dessus de la ville’ belongs to Marc Chagall’s mature late work. By then 92 years old, the artist had long enjoyed international recognition and had been living in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in southern France since 1966. Despite his advanced age, Chagall remained exceptionally active, continuing to paint and undertake major commissions. In the same year, these included a mosaic for Vence Cathedral and lithographic projects for the Parisian art publisher Aimé Maeght. In his late paintings, Chagall returned to themes he had first explored during his early years in Paris and Vitebsk, themes that had shaped his unmistakable pictorial language over decades. The present painting brings together several of these characteristic motifs. The couple floating above the town recalls Chagall’s early depictions of lovers, which arose from his relationship with Bella Rosenfeld. In works from the 1910s, he first expressed love pictorially through the suspension of gravity. Freed from their earthly surroundings, the lovers float above the rooftops of their home town. This became one of the most enduring motifs in Chagall’s œuvre. The townscape in the lower part of the painting refers back to his early depictions of Vitebsk. During his first stay in Paris, from 1910 to 1914, Chagall was already transforming memories of his Russian homeland into an imaginary world in which different places and periods merge. Here too, the houses, streets and small figures appear less as a view of an identifiable place than as a recollection of a familiar world long since past. The large bouquet, meanwhile, revisits a motif that became increasingly prominent in Chagall’s painting from the 1920s onwards. Following his return to France in 1923, flower still lifes became a regular feature of his œuvre, often combined with lovers and townscapes. In the present painting, the abundant bouquet and its luminous colours contrast with the predominantly blue figures and the grey-pink townscape below. * The full tax is charged on this item marked *, i.e. VAT is charged on the sum will be refunded to Purchasers providing a validly stamped export declaration.