Marc Chagall

Timothy Yarger Gallery, Beverly Hills
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1999


The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comité Chagall.

The canvas is not lined. There appears to be no evidence of retouching visible under UV light. This work is in very good original condition. Colours: Fairly accurate in the printed catalogue, although the blues are brighter and more vibrant in the original.
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Painted during Chagall's final period in the Côte d'Azur, Le Poisson dans le ciel captures Chagall's poetic dreamlike subconscious using the iconography of the sea. Just as Picasso and Matisse chose the south of France as the ideal Mediterranean landscape for its classicist appeal and distance from modernised city centres, Chagall too sought refuge in such a setting, one which spurred his prolific artistic production of the 1960s.

The seascape imagery is immediately present in the long thin fish stretching across the upper part of the composition. Creating a contrast to the nocturnal blue dominating the canvas, the silver-scaled fish hovers in mid-air above the deep ocean lit by the light of a crescent moon. A lonely fisherman rows his boat in the shadow of a radiant bouquet entirely unaware of the cockerel behind him. The circular motion of the composition creates a feeling of unrest as our eye follows the different elements in the work, involving the viewer in this structural and formal play. As a gesture towards the essence of being, Chagall's animal subjects are not allegorical figures, 'but are simply characters...the flying fish is simply a flying fish' (Chagall, connu et inconnu, (exhibition catalogue) Grand Palais, Paris, 2003, p. 222, translated from French). The rich juxtapostioning of the conscious and subconscious, the real and the unreal, combine to create an imagery that is at once intensely fresh but also poetically familiar.