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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from the Comité Marc Chagall.
Chagall painted Les Amoureux in 1964 while living on the Côte d'Azure at his villa, Les Collines. The artist moved to Les Collines in the spring of 1950 and would reside there for sixteen years, initially with his companion Virginia McNeil and later with his second wife Valentine ('Vava') Brodsky. Situated on the slope of the Baou des Blancs, near the road between Saint-Paul-de-Vence and Saint-Jeannet, Chagall's beloved home was surrounded by peach orchards and olive groves; it was a veritable Arcadia in which the artist found a vital new energy. Chagall set up his studio in an annex to the house where large windows gave an expansive view to Vence, whose tumbling streets are suggested in the background of the present work. Describing the influence of this landscape on Chagall's painting of the period, Franz Meyer wrote, 'The new environment is responsible not only for the view from his window on the little old walled town and the steeple of the medieval cathedral, which appears in so many of his pictures, but also for the novel charm of the painterly mood which embraces all things that grow and blossom' (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall Life and Work, New York, 1965, pp. 501-502).
From the outset, Chagall had established himself as a colourist, but it was not until this latter part of his career that colour achieved full radiance and a new plenitude in his work. Using lessons he had learnt while working on large-scale public commissions for stained glass windows, it was during the 1960s that Chagall truly embraced light and colour as essential elements in their own right. The warm luminosity and sun-drenched colour of the South of France pervades Les Amoureux and is complimented by Chagall's airy, free handling of the pigment. The imagery employed here combines some of the artist's favourite subjects in a composition of true poetic beauty. Like many of his best works, this gouache and watercolour painting represents two lovers caught up in the early excitement of love, surrounded by benevolent animals offering floral bouquets that explode in a riot of colour. Chagall invariably used familiar landscapes as a stage on which his characters could interact. By depicting this couple surrendering themselves to one another in a lush Mediterranean landscape, Chagall recreated the area of Saint-Paul-de-Vence as a paradisiacal garden in which his lovers appear as a modern-day Adam and Eve.
Chagall painted Les Amoureux in 1964 while living on the Côte d'Azure at his villa, Les Collines. The artist moved to Les Collines in the spring of 1950 and would reside there for sixteen years, initially with his companion Virginia McNeil and later with his second wife Valentine ('Vava') Brodsky. Situated on the slope of the Baou des Blancs, near the road between Saint-Paul-de-Vence and Saint-Jeannet, Chagall's beloved home was surrounded by peach orchards and olive groves; it was a veritable Arcadia in which the artist found a vital new energy. Chagall set up his studio in an annex to the house where large windows gave an expansive view to Vence, whose tumbling streets are suggested in the background of the present work. Describing the influence of this landscape on Chagall's painting of the period, Franz Meyer wrote, 'The new environment is responsible not only for the view from his window on the little old walled town and the steeple of the medieval cathedral, which appears in so many of his pictures, but also for the novel charm of the painterly mood which embraces all things that grow and blossom' (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall Life and Work, New York, 1965, pp. 501-502).
From the outset, Chagall had established himself as a colourist, but it was not until this latter part of his career that colour achieved full radiance and a new plenitude in his work. Using lessons he had learnt while working on large-scale public commissions for stained glass windows, it was during the 1960s that Chagall truly embraced light and colour as essential elements in their own right. The warm luminosity and sun-drenched colour of the South of France pervades Les Amoureux and is complimented by Chagall's airy, free handling of the pigment. The imagery employed here combines some of the artist's favourite subjects in a composition of true poetic beauty. Like many of his best works, this gouache and watercolour painting represents two lovers caught up in the early excitement of love, surrounded by benevolent animals offering floral bouquets that explode in a riot of colour. Chagall invariably used familiar landscapes as a stage on which his characters could interact. By depicting this couple surrendering themselves to one another in a lush Mediterranean landscape, Chagall recreated the area of Saint-Paul-de-Vence as a paradisiacal garden in which his lovers appear as a modern-day Adam and Eve.