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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Marc Chagall.
Marc Chagall's experience and memories of the circus lay at the heart of his personal mythology, and had been an important subject for the artist since his Russian and early Paris years. In the late 1920s, as he was finishing his series of gouaches based on the Fables of La Fontaine, the dealer Ambroise Vollard, its sponsor, suggested the artist undertake a second group, this time on the theme of the circus. Chagall painted nineteen gouaches, many of which were based on sketches that he made in Vollard's box at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris. The variety of characters and poses in these works provided elements to which the artist returned on many occasions over the course of his career.
Chagall's circus pictures are almost all filled with brilliant color and exuberant activity, and stand out among his subjects as being especially joyous and life-affirming. The palette of Le cavalier violet is especially reminiscent of Chagall's work from the 1920s. Having lived in Paris for several years, Chagall first moved to the Côte d'Azur in 1926, where the vegetation and the light were a revelation to him. Executed more than forty-five years after this first visit, the bright, translucent colors seen in the present work impart pure radiance.
Marc Chagall's experience and memories of the circus lay at the heart of his personal mythology, and had been an important subject for the artist since his Russian and early Paris years. In the late 1920s, as he was finishing his series of gouaches based on the Fables of La Fontaine, the dealer Ambroise Vollard, its sponsor, suggested the artist undertake a second group, this time on the theme of the circus. Chagall painted nineteen gouaches, many of which were based on sketches that he made in Vollard's box at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris. The variety of characters and poses in these works provided elements to which the artist returned on many occasions over the course of his career.
Chagall's circus pictures are almost all filled with brilliant color and exuberant activity, and stand out among his subjects as being especially joyous and life-affirming. The palette of Le cavalier violet is especially reminiscent of Chagall's work from the 1920s. Having lived in Paris for several years, Chagall first moved to the Côte d'Azur in 1926, where the vegetation and the light were a revelation to him. Executed more than forty-five years after this first visit, the bright, translucent colors seen in the present work impart pure radiance.