Marc Chagall

David Rockefeller, New York

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (gift from the above and sold: Christie's, London, June 27, 1988, lot 63)

Janis Dzedens, Sweden (acquired at the above sale)

Sale: Christie's, New York, May 12, 1998, lot 52

Private Collection

Sale: Christie's, New York, November 6, 2008, lot 81

David Benramon Fine Art, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Tokyo, Musée National d'Art Occidental & Kyoto, Musée Municipal, Marc Chagall, 1963, no. 115

Paris, Grand Palais, Hommage à Marc Chagall, 1969-70, no. 169

London, Royal Academy of Art & Philadelphia, Museum of Art, Chagall, 1985, no. 99, illustrated in the catalogue

Werner Haftmann, Chagall, New York, 1984, illustrated pl. 29

Werner Haftmann, Marc Chagall, New York, 1998, illustrated p. 137

Excellent condition. The canvas is lined. Under UV, no evidence of inpainting. The surface is fresh and the paint layer is intact.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

La Ferme is a quintessential example of Chagall's mastery in assembling an array of folkloric images in a dense and colorful composition. This work contains several of the most crucial elements in the artist's pictorial iconography: symbols of his agrarian roots and domesticity and a landscape evoking both the poor villages of his childhood home in Russia and the Mediterranean coastal towns in the south of France. Each figure is masterfully rendered through a matrix of intense color and spatial experimentation that epitomized Chagall's work, reflecting his own very personal delight in the act of painting.

As Susan Compton wrote in the catalogue of the Royal Academy's Chagall retrospective, "This bucolic scene is a celebration of colour, with its pairings of yellow and blue, green and purple, with a well-placed red accent to set it all off. Among Chagall's later oil-paintings it is an unusually vivid and considered reminder of life in the countryside. The farmer's wife, as appropriate to rural southern France as to the backyards of the artist's childhood holidays in Lyozno, comes forward to tend the cow which provides her with her livelihood. [...] While this picture can be enjoyed for its ravishing colour and its reminder of an existence ordered by the sun and moon and shared by man and his animals, it carries other messages which the artist has introduced in other compositions. His cow belongs with the woman in the hierarchy of female symbols, signified here by the green moon which hovers overhead; these are paired with the cockerel, that masculine sign which stands also for the sun. [...] Although the cow may never quench her thirst, she is assured of immortality by the proximity of a Tree of Life: or should this be interpreted, perhaps, as that other tree which stood in the Garden of Eden – the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, with its enticing red apples? Once such symbols are recognised the picture takes on a dramatic significance, allowing the viewer not only to enjoy the freedom and sureness by which the artist has relished the act of painting, but to be touched at a deeper level" (S. Compton, Chagall (exhibition catalogue), Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p. 14).