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Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
"With age," Chagall explained to his son-in-law Franz Meyer, "I see more clearly and justly what is true and what is false along our way and just how ridiculous everything is which one has not obtained with one's blood, with one's very soul, everything that has not been pierced by love... herein lies true art" (quoted in F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, Paris, 1995, p. 282). The theme of love, tinged with nostalgia and cast in gem-colored hues, permeates Chagall's canvases of the 1970s, done as he approached his ninetieth birthday. "My only ambition in life was to love," Chagall reminisced in an address at the University of Notre Dame in 1965. "Love what is worthy of love," he admonished his listeners, "believe in whom one can believe" (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 194). The great love of Chagall's life--his much-adored first wife, Bella--is the familiar subject of Le Repos: her recumbent body, in a pose like that of Giorgione's Venus, asleep outdoors, is awash in softly luminous tones of deep carmine and pink that sweep upward, enfolding a landscape that contains the outlines of Vence, the small Mediterranean village that Chagall had called home since the spring of 1950. One of the large studio windows in his villa, "La Colline," overlooked the town, and from it he could see the distant view of Vence that he has recreated in this painting.
"My lovers are forms, my forms are lovers," Chagall reflected in the twilight of his career. "At bottom, for me, what one calls subject is only another aspect of technique" (quoted in P. Schneider, Marc Chagall: Paintings and Temperas, 1975-1978, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1979, n.p.). Once "the life of painting [had] replaced the life of the painter," Pierre Schneider observed, "Chagall discovered new pleasures in the poetics of color and the refinements of long-familiar forms" (in ibid., n.p.). Brilliant, almost pearlized tonalities of green, blue, and red cast a warm glow over Le Repos; these floating clouds of color effectively embrace and absorb the figures and landscape, illuminating them with a silvery richness and suggesting the soft ease of welcome repose. "It has only been in the second part of his life--especially after the decisive experiences with ceramics and glass--that Chagall's color has attained its full flowering, its gem-like consistency and its fluid transparency," Jean Leymarie once remarked. "It spreads out over vast stretches in a single dominant tonality with infinite nuances, welcoming the majesty of night or the radiance of the sun, coming to life out of itself like a wave or the sap of a tree, and spontaneously identifying itself with the movement of the soul and the transcendent breath of inspiration" (Marc Chagall: A Celebration, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1977, n.p.).
Fondly recounting an afternoon that he spent with Chagall, the Marchese Bino Sanminiatelli exclaimed, "Finally he confesses that despite his proclaimed mysticism, he loves to live and to love. Why not, after all? To be loved by a tree, by a mountain (but he is not thinking about a tree and a mountain) to love the marvelousness and the terror of nature. And also to contemplate, to take joy in, to savor of one's own substance. That's enough to fill a life. It's enough that a thing not remain as it was before having contemplated it" (quoted in S. Alexander, Marc Chagall: A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 459).
"With age," Chagall explained to his son-in-law Franz Meyer, "I see more clearly and justly what is true and what is false along our way and just how ridiculous everything is which one has not obtained with one's blood, with one's very soul, everything that has not been pierced by love... herein lies true art" (quoted in F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, Paris, 1995, p. 282). The theme of love, tinged with nostalgia and cast in gem-colored hues, permeates Chagall's canvases of the 1970s, done as he approached his ninetieth birthday. "My only ambition in life was to love," Chagall reminisced in an address at the University of Notre Dame in 1965. "Love what is worthy of love," he admonished his listeners, "believe in whom one can believe" (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 194). The great love of Chagall's life--his much-adored first wife, Bella--is the familiar subject of Le Repos: her recumbent body, in a pose like that of Giorgione's Venus, asleep outdoors, is awash in softly luminous tones of deep carmine and pink that sweep upward, enfolding a landscape that contains the outlines of Vence, the small Mediterranean village that Chagall had called home since the spring of 1950. One of the large studio windows in his villa, "La Colline," overlooked the town, and from it he could see the distant view of Vence that he has recreated in this painting.
"My lovers are forms, my forms are lovers," Chagall reflected in the twilight of his career. "At bottom, for me, what one calls subject is only another aspect of technique" (quoted in P. Schneider, Marc Chagall: Paintings and Temperas, 1975-1978, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1979, n.p.). Once "the life of painting [had] replaced the life of the painter," Pierre Schneider observed, "Chagall discovered new pleasures in the poetics of color and the refinements of long-familiar forms" (in ibid., n.p.). Brilliant, almost pearlized tonalities of green, blue, and red cast a warm glow over Le Repos; these floating clouds of color effectively embrace and absorb the figures and landscape, illuminating them with a silvery richness and suggesting the soft ease of welcome repose. "It has only been in the second part of his life--especially after the decisive experiences with ceramics and glass--that Chagall's color has attained its full flowering, its gem-like consistency and its fluid transparency," Jean Leymarie once remarked. "It spreads out over vast stretches in a single dominant tonality with infinite nuances, welcoming the majesty of night or the radiance of the sun, coming to life out of itself like a wave or the sap of a tree, and spontaneously identifying itself with the movement of the soul and the transcendent breath of inspiration" (Marc Chagall: A Celebration, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1977, n.p.).
Fondly recounting an afternoon that he spent with Chagall, the Marchese Bino Sanminiatelli exclaimed, "Finally he confesses that despite his proclaimed mysticism, he loves to live and to love. Why not, after all? To be loved by a tree, by a mountain (but he is not thinking about a tree and a mountain) to love the marvelousness and the terror of nature. And also to contemplate, to take joy in, to savor of one's own substance. That's enough to fill a life. It's enough that a thing not remain as it was before having contemplated it" (quoted in S. Alexander, Marc Chagall: A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 459).