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Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Painted in 1949, Les amoureux au bouquet combines two of Marc Chagall's most favoured themes: flowers and lovers. This picture, bathed in the rich blue of its background, has a sense of nocturnal romance, yet the flowers form a firework-like explosion of colour that dominates the entire composition.
Les amoureux au bouquet was painted the year after Chagall had returned from his exile in the United States of America, where he had sought refuge during the Second World War. He had made an exploratory trip back to France in 1946, when he stayed in rooms in the avenue d'Iéna that had been rented from his friend, the art historian Jacques Lassaigne, the Director of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the first owner of Les amoureux au bouquet. In 1948 he had come back to France on a more permanent footing, moving into a house at Orgeval, near Paris. In 1949, though, he had been lured to the South of France where he would ultimately make his home. Staying at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, he was seduced by the light of the Mediterranean; there, he created a number of luminous gouaches that were often bathed in a lapis-like blue similar to that seen in Les amoureux au bouquet.
Chagall had returned to France with his partner, Virginia McNeil, who had entered his household some time after the death of his wife, Bella, in the United States in 1944. In his paintings, the motif of young lovers continued to reverberate with the near presence of his late wife as well as with the more current relationship with Virginia. Chagall would tell Virginia that, 'it was Bella who sent you to look after me. Rembrandt had his Hendrickje Stoffels to console him after Saskia's death; I have you' (Chagall, quoted in J. Wullschlager, Chagall: Love and Exile, London, 2008, p. 428). For Chagall, there was room in his personal pantheon for more love, and indeed love was the main theme of his paintings. In Les amoureux au bouquet, this is celebrated in a feast of colour and vivid painterly movements that convey both the sensuality of the scene and the artist's own warm enthusiasm.
Painted in 1949, Les amoureux au bouquet combines two of Marc Chagall's most favoured themes: flowers and lovers. This picture, bathed in the rich blue of its background, has a sense of nocturnal romance, yet the flowers form a firework-like explosion of colour that dominates the entire composition.
Les amoureux au bouquet was painted the year after Chagall had returned from his exile in the United States of America, where he had sought refuge during the Second World War. He had made an exploratory trip back to France in 1946, when he stayed in rooms in the avenue d'Iéna that had been rented from his friend, the art historian Jacques Lassaigne, the Director of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the first owner of Les amoureux au bouquet. In 1948 he had come back to France on a more permanent footing, moving into a house at Orgeval, near Paris. In 1949, though, he had been lured to the South of France where he would ultimately make his home. Staying at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, he was seduced by the light of the Mediterranean; there, he created a number of luminous gouaches that were often bathed in a lapis-like blue similar to that seen in Les amoureux au bouquet.
Chagall had returned to France with his partner, Virginia McNeil, who had entered his household some time after the death of his wife, Bella, in the United States in 1944. In his paintings, the motif of young lovers continued to reverberate with the near presence of his late wife as well as with the more current relationship with Virginia. Chagall would tell Virginia that, 'it was Bella who sent you to look after me. Rembrandt had his Hendrickje Stoffels to console him after Saskia's death; I have you' (Chagall, quoted in J. Wullschlager, Chagall: Love and Exile, London, 2008, p. 428). For Chagall, there was room in his personal pantheon for more love, and indeed love was the main theme of his paintings. In Les amoureux au bouquet, this is celebrated in a feast of colour and vivid painterly movements that convey both the sensuality of the scene and the artist's own warm enthusiasm.