.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
"For me, you are—my life," Chagall wrote encouragingly to his young paramour, Virginia Haggard McNeil, three days after their son David was born in 1946. "I can't live anymore without you. Fate wanted me to meet you after dear Bella (whom you love too)" (quoted in B. Harshav, ed., Marc Chagall and His Times, A Documentary Narrative, Stanford, 2004, p. 588). Writing from Paris, Chagall had timed his first return to Europe after the war purposefully to be absent at the birth of his son, the undeniable proof of a relationship he was not yet prepared to admit. Virginia, the Paris-born cosmopolitan daughter of a British diplomat, had entered his life in 1945 as his housekeeper, rebellious in youth and unhappy in her marriage. Each of them had felt "starved," as Virginia later recalled, but they found new love together, unexpectedly for Chagall only nine months after the death of his beloved wife, Bella (quoted in ibid., p. 565). The pleasant reality of daily domestic intimacy, however, could never upstage the power of the mythic eternal moment that Chagall had created around the memory of Bella, nor diminish the intensity of imagery for which she remained the principal source.
Both women appear to grace Maternité au soleil rouge: the angelic Bella hovers over the body of Virginia, who holds a child in her arms. As years passed following Bella’s death, her specter made only occasional, ectoplasmic appearances in Chagall’s paintings, almost always in bridal veil. Chagall's brides were, according to Virginia, "always Bella," but the Madonna and Child images were generally Virginia and David, his son (ibid., p. 386).
"For me, you are—my life," Chagall wrote encouragingly to his young paramour, Virginia Haggard McNeil, three days after their son David was born in 1946. "I can't live anymore without you. Fate wanted me to meet you after dear Bella (whom you love too)" (quoted in B. Harshav, ed., Marc Chagall and His Times, A Documentary Narrative, Stanford, 2004, p. 588). Writing from Paris, Chagall had timed his first return to Europe after the war purposefully to be absent at the birth of his son, the undeniable proof of a relationship he was not yet prepared to admit. Virginia, the Paris-born cosmopolitan daughter of a British diplomat, had entered his life in 1945 as his housekeeper, rebellious in youth and unhappy in her marriage. Each of them had felt "starved," as Virginia later recalled, but they found new love together, unexpectedly for Chagall only nine months after the death of his beloved wife, Bella (quoted in ibid., p. 565). The pleasant reality of daily domestic intimacy, however, could never upstage the power of the mythic eternal moment that Chagall had created around the memory of Bella, nor diminish the intensity of imagery for which she remained the principal source.
Both women appear to grace Maternité au soleil rouge: the angelic Bella hovers over the body of Virginia, who holds a child in her arms. As years passed following Bella’s death, her specter made only occasional, ectoplasmic appearances in Chagall’s paintings, almost always in bridal veil. Chagall's brides were, according to Virginia, "always Bella," but the Madonna and Child images were generally Virginia and David, his son (ibid., p. 386).