MARC CHAGALL | Le Colporteur

Mrs. E. Solomon (and sold by the estate: Sotheby's, London, December 3, 1986, lot 429)
Private Collection, Paris (acquired at the above sale)
Private Collection, New York
Sale: Christie's, London, November 28, 1989, lot 132
Acquired at the above sale

London, Ben Uri Gallery, Fortieth Anniversary Exhibition, 1956, no. 13
Paris, Galerie Gerald Piltzer, Chagall: Vitebsk, St. Petersbourg, Paris, 1993, illustrated in color in the catalogue
Bern, Museum of Fine Arts, Marc Chagall, 1907-1917, 1995-96, no. 138, illustrated in color in the catalogue (titled The Peddler)

Executed on buff colored wove paper which has been laid down to a sheet of black paper. There are some scattered losses to the black sheet upon which the sheet is laid. There is a nailhead sized loss to the pigment and associated crack along the right half of the top edge. There is some minor cracking in the areas of thickest gouache, including a small area of associated lifting directly to the left of the figure's proper right arm. There is a tiny loss to the green gouache in the lower right corner. There is a nailhead sized area of loss and apparent inpainting in the yellow pigment along the bottom half of the left edge. There is some waving to the sheet throughout as well as some flattened creases mostly along the left edge. The work is in overall good condition.
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.

Following his studies in St. Petersburg, the young Chagall won a scholarship to Paris in 1910, and soon moved to La Ruche, one of the city’s most extraordinary Cités d’artistes. Situated behind the abattoirs of Paris, this twelve-sided building with its hidden garden housed 140 studios which were filled with young painters, sculptors, poets and bohemians from all over the world. This was to prove a seminal experience in his artistic development, as his stay brought him into contact with luminaries such as Léger, Laurens, Soutine and Modigliani, and their wider circle of acquaintances, including the poets Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire. Despite his contact with these avant-garde artists, Chagall's work remained suffused with folkloric imagery from his childhood in Vitebsk. The figure of the peddler, with a sack full of wares on his back, is central among these. In this exceptional early gouache, Chagall employs his characteristic blocks of vivid color to create a charming image of the vendor. A few years later, Chagall would modernize the figure of the traditional Jewish peddler in his seminal work, Le Marchand de journaux, which served as an allegory for the sorrows of World War I (see fig. 1).

"Chagall's great lyrical breakthrough came around 1911. This is the moment when metaphor, with him alone, made its triumphal appearance in modern painting. In order to complete the deconstruction of spatial planes that had been prepared by Rimbaud and at the same time free the object from the laws of weight and gravity, breaking down the barrier between elements and kingdoms." —André Breton, Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, 1928



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