MARC CHAGALL | Le couple sous l'arbre or Les fiancés au clair de lune

Galleria Gian Ferrari, Milan
Private Collection, Italy (acquired from the above)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Lucerne, Galerie Rosengart, Chagall, Coloured Wash-Drawings, 1967, no. 30, illustrated in the catalogue
Ferrara, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Marc Chagall 1908-1985, 1992-93, no. 65, illustrated in the catalogue

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Although the majority of Marc Chagall’s life was spent outside of Russia and the home town of Vitebsk, the artist’s vivid memories of his hometown intimately pervade his work. In Le couple sous l'arbre or Les fiancés au clair de lune, the recurring and interchanging motif of the cockerel and bird draws on his memory of his childhood experiences in Vitebsk. When the present work was executed Chagall had been away from Russia for almost fifty years; yet, despite (or perhaps due to) this separation, the imagery in his work retains its fascination with home, with love, and of the joy and innocence of his youth. Throughout Chagall’s œuvre these themes are constantly re-examined, and the present work exhibits some of his most identifiable imagery. Juxtaposing the village rooftop, farmyard animals, an intertwined couple with a tree that could easily be mistaken for a blooming bouquet of flowers, Chagall presents us with an intimate, monochromatic portrayal of his own phantasmagorical artistic world. Painted in a neutral palette, in the present work Chagall encourages a singular focus on these symbolic references and their masterful draughtsmanship, with their white accents set against the brown background. In contrast to the bustling city life in Paris and New York for which he had supplemented rural living, in the present work Chagall makes constant reference to these simpler times. The distinctive layering of symbolic visual imagery is characteristic of Chagall’s artist’s practice. Around 1939 with the outset of the Second World War, Chagall developed his more mature visual lexicon and strongly symbolic references, alongside multilayered characters, began to make their appearances in earnest. As news reached him of the terrible destruction of Vitebsk and unimaginable suffering of Jews across Europe, his yearning for his old life intensified. As such through the following decades up to and including the execution of the present work, the compositions become much denser, with iconography and symbolism condensed into his tightly composed canvases. The richness of the symbolism which, although each element is identifiable, defies unifying categorisation. Through their constant repetition many of the themes and tropes within Chagall’s art become immediately recognisable, yet due to their frequent deployment within the dream-like spaces which they occupy it is difficult to impose an individual narrative on each work. In fact, this was largely Chagall’s intention, as he himself proclaimed: ‘For me a picture is a surface covered with representations of things (objects, animals, human beings) in a certain order in which logic and illustration have no importance. The visual effect of the composition is what is paramount’ (quoted in Susan Compton, Chagall (exhibition catalogue), London, 1985, p. 21).



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