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Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In Le baldaquin, Marc Chagall shows a couple during their wedding, with the chuppah, a canopy held above the bride and groom during the Jewish marriage ceremony, still in the background, one of its bearers leaning against a pole. A bouquet lies on the ground; a winged violinist plays in the background, wearing harlequin-like trousers, while a goat appears to float through the sky adding a discreet note of oneiric magic to the scene.
Marriage was one of Chagall's most favoured themes and features in a number of his celebrated compositions, often reflecting his own memories of life in Vitebsk and his own wedding to Bella, his great love, a constant source of inspiration to him throughout his career. Nostalgia for the old country, for the Russia he had now twice abandoned, both before and after the Revolution, infused his pictures as he cast his mind back to life there, in what is now Belarus. In pictures such as Le baldaquin, Chagall's Jewish sense of identity is brought to the fore in this celebration of both romance and ritual.
When Le baldaquin was offered for sale by Christie's almost two decades ago, it was ascribed a date of circa 1931. Looking at the way that the scumbled yet bright light breathes through the composition, this supposition appears logical, as it recalls some of the works that Chagall created following his trip to Palestine in 1931, when he was seeking inspiration for the biblical scenes he was concurrently creating for Ambroise Vollard (see Chagall, quoted in F. Meyer, Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 397). Certainly, the palette appears to reflect the subtler luminosity of his pre-war years, as does the deliberate restraint regarding the number of elements within the composition, which allow Chagall and the viewer alike to focus on the essentials: love, magic and, in the form of the fiddler, music, the sights, feelings and sounds of his former home providing solace to the artist.
In Le baldaquin, Marc Chagall shows a couple during their wedding, with the chuppah, a canopy held above the bride and groom during the Jewish marriage ceremony, still in the background, one of its bearers leaning against a pole. A bouquet lies on the ground; a winged violinist plays in the background, wearing harlequin-like trousers, while a goat appears to float through the sky adding a discreet note of oneiric magic to the scene.
Marriage was one of Chagall's most favoured themes and features in a number of his celebrated compositions, often reflecting his own memories of life in Vitebsk and his own wedding to Bella, his great love, a constant source of inspiration to him throughout his career. Nostalgia for the old country, for the Russia he had now twice abandoned, both before and after the Revolution, infused his pictures as he cast his mind back to life there, in what is now Belarus. In pictures such as Le baldaquin, Chagall's Jewish sense of identity is brought to the fore in this celebration of both romance and ritual.
When Le baldaquin was offered for sale by Christie's almost two decades ago, it was ascribed a date of circa 1931. Looking at the way that the scumbled yet bright light breathes through the composition, this supposition appears logical, as it recalls some of the works that Chagall created following his trip to Palestine in 1931, when he was seeking inspiration for the biblical scenes he was concurrently creating for Ambroise Vollard (see Chagall, quoted in F. Meyer, Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 397). Certainly, the palette appears to reflect the subtler luminosity of his pre-war years, as does the deliberate restraint regarding the number of elements within the composition, which allow Chagall and the viewer alike to focus on the essentials: love, magic and, in the form of the fiddler, music, the sights, feelings and sounds of his former home providing solace to the artist.