Marc Chagall

Madame Louis Solvay, Paris
Sale : Sotheby's, London, 4th December 1991, lot 141
Private Collection, Italy

Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, La Fontaine par Chagall - 100 Fables, 1930, no. 92
Céret, Musée d'Art Moderne & Nice, Musée National Marc Chagall, Marc Chagall, Les Fables de La Fontaine, 1995-96, no. 43

Executed on light grey wove paper, laid down on cardboard. There is a slight waviness to the sheet and the paper has become a little brittle with some minor losses in the lower right corner and scuffs and scratches along the edges. Traces of glue are visible along the upper and lower edges. There is a 0.5cm v-shaped repaired tear in the lower left corner and a 2cm diagonal flattened crease in the upper right corner. Overall the colours are fresh and this work remains in very good condition.
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Realising that the work of La Fontaine had thusfar only inspired literary or fragmented illustrations, Ambroise Vollard decided in 1927-1930 to commission an artist to illustrate the writer's Fables. He intended to call upon “an artist with a creative imagination, and capable of coloured inventions” (Ambroise Vollard, ‘De la Fontaine à Chagall’, L’Intransigeant, 8 janvier 1929), thus he decided to choose Marc Chagall, whose aesthetic seemed to him “close to La Fontaine’s, rich and subtle, realist and fantastic”. Chagall had just returned to France two years earlier, and this commission allowed him to work on a monumental figure of French literature, studied in every school. Many disapproved of Vollard’s decision to ask an artist with such a Romantic style, and a native of Russia, to illustrate a symbol of French culture. The case was even discussed in front of the National Assembly. But in response to all this outrage, Vollard sagely reminded them: “Didn’t La Fontaine himself borrow his Fables from Aesop, who was Latin as far as I know?” (Ambroise Vollard, in Marc Chagall, Les Fables de La Fontaine, Paris, 1995, p.18). Thankfully, other critics were more inspired by these compositions, including Jacques Guenne for whom “in front of this series of gouaches, none of which ressembles the other, not in colour, not in inspiration, it is difficult to decide what we should admire most, the tremendous alchemy arising from each image, or the fabulous invention and touching kindness of this spirit. Maybe we should above all revel in the miraculous way that Chagall’s colours become the the high point of his inspiration” (Jacques Guenne, L’Art vivant, 15 décembre 1927).

Around one hundred gouaches were executed by Chagall around this theme. For Le loup et l’agneau, the artist chose to illustrate the moral of the story, when “Saying this, into the woods. The wolf carries the lamb, and then eats him. Without any other why or wherefore” (Jean de La Fontaine, Le Loup et l’Agneau). While many other illustrators would have tried to humanise the animals, Chagall attempts to express the idea of confrontation between brutal force and fragility. In this series, the artist uses diverse styles, varying between ethereal compositions, and saturated gouaches dominated by blues. In 1952 this group became the subject of a series of enhanced etchings. The present artwork corresponds to the copper plate numbered 5.