Marc Chagall

Galerie Fletchtheim, Berlin
The Art Institute, Chicago, 1930 (acquired from the above)
Mr. and Mrs. William Preston Harrison
Los Angeles County Museum (gifted from the above, 1931 and sold: Sotheby Parke Bernet, Los Angeles, November 9, 1977, lot 450)
Ida Chagall
Private collection (acquired from the above, 1980, and sold: Sotheby's, London, April 5, 1989, lot 322)

Chicago, The Art Institute, The Twentieth International Exhibition of Watercolors, 1941, no. 127
Pasadena Art Museum, 1957
Tokyo, Museé National d'Art Occidental; Kyoto, Municipal Museum of Art; and Paris, Museé National d'Art Moderne, Exposition Marc Chagall, 1963-1964, no. 130
Toulouse, Museé de Toulouse, Chagall et le Théâtre, 1967

Los Angeles Museum Art News, December 1931, p. 3, illustrated
Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1963, no. 55, illustrated

This sheet is in generally good condition with fresh, bright colors. The sheet has been professionally treated: it was removed from a previous support and is now backed by a sheet of rice paper. There are some minor creases inherent in the paper and the artist's pinholes are evident in all four corners. There is an amended crease or minor tear in the upper left corner.
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.

"I wanted to dream up some vacation just to be able to visit home.

All those thoughts and ideas about returning home were cut off by the Louvre.

Wandering about the round hall of Veronese and below, in the hall of Manet, Delacroix, Courbet, Millet – I wanted nothing more."

~ Marc Chagall quoted in Benjamin and Barbara Harshav, Marc Chagall and His Times, p. 142

 

This charming gouache was painted circa 1911-12, just as Chagall was settling into Paris. What drew the twenty-three year old to the metropolitan center was artistic promise; what kept him there, according to his own diary, was his discovery of the Louvre, especially a burgeoning respect for the works of Paolo Veronese.

 

The present work is a variant of a composition by Veronese in the Prado, Madrid, entitled Venus and Adonis. Venus, her legs cloaked in blue fabric, sits under a tree holding a red-backed mirror while Adonis sleeps on her knees, her left hand tenderly caressing his head. Seated in a verdant landscape, Eros and two sight hounds cavort at her feet. Chagall has simplified the composition here by magnifying the two figures such that they fill the picture plane and eliminating the mythological context.

 

Chagall could have been exposed to this composition in many ways, such as prints or reproduction by other artists.  Love, whether mythological or earthly, was never far from Chagall's mind, and his fiancée played a central role in his art; he had met Bella Rosenfeld in Vitesbek in 1910 before journeying to Paris and would return to Russia to marry her in 1914.