Marc Chagall

Estate of the artist

Sale: Christie's New York, November 19, 1998, lot 353

Acquired at the above sale

Reykjavik, National Gallery of Iceland, The Reykjavik Arts Festival, 1998, no. 29

Painted circa 1970, Scène de cirque is a resplendent example of the creative energy and sense of theater Chagall never ceased to find in the subject of the circus. The artist devoted numerous canvases to depicting the larger-than-life atmosphere of the circus and the captivating power of its imagery. Chagall’s fascination with the circus dates back to his childhood in Vitebsk and his years in Paris when he frequently attended the circus with Ambroise Vollard. As Venturi explains, “The importance of the circus motif in modern French literature and painting is well known; in painting it suffices to recall the names of Seurat and Rouault. As always, Chagall’s images of circus people … are at once burlesque and tender. Their perspective of sentiment, their fantastic forms, suggest that the painter is amusing himself in a freer mood than usual; and the result is eloquent of the unmistakable purity flowing from Chagall’s heart. These circus scenes are mature realizations of earlier dreams” (L. Venturi, Marc Chagall, New York, 1945, p. 39).

"It's a magic world, the circus," Chagall once wrote, "an age-old game that is danced, and in which tears and smiles, the play of arms and legs take the form of great art... The circus is the performance that seems to me the most tragic. Throughout the centuries, it has been man's most piercing cry in his search for entertainment and joy. It often takes the form of lofty poetry. I seem to see a Don Quixote in search of an ideal, like that marvelous clown who wept and dreamed of human love" (quoted in Marc Chagall, Le Cirque (exhibition catalogue), Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1981, n.p.).