.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
As had Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre Bonnard before him, Marc Chagall found the Mediterranean an irresistibly congenial and stimulating environment in which to live and work. In 1950 he purchased Les Collines, a hillside house with surrounding property in Vence, and made it his permanent home, thereafter spending only short spells in Paris. The beautiful area was an elegant medieval town on the Côte d'Azur which emerged as an artistic centre following the Second World War - it quickly enchanted the artist, who then chose to spend most of his time during this period living there.
The present work was painted in Vence in 1949, the year before Chagall moved there. In these years, 'the light, the vegetation, the rhythm of life all contributed to the rise of a more relaxed, airy sensuous style in which the magic of colour dominates more and more with the passing of the years. At Vence we witnessed the daily miracle of growth and blossoming in the mild, strong all-pervading light - an experience in which earth and matter had their place' (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, London, 1964, p. 519).
As had Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Pierre Bonnard before him, Marc Chagall found the Mediterranean an irresistibly congenial and stimulating environment in which to live and work. In 1950 he purchased Les Collines, a hillside house with surrounding property in Vence, and made it his permanent home, thereafter spending only short spells in Paris. The beautiful area was an elegant medieval town on the Côte d'Azur which emerged as an artistic centre following the Second World War - it quickly enchanted the artist, who then chose to spend most of his time during this period living there.
The present work was painted in Vence in 1949, the year before Chagall moved there. In these years, 'the light, the vegetation, the rhythm of life all contributed to the rise of a more relaxed, airy sensuous style in which the magic of colour dominates more and more with the passing of the years. At Vence we witnessed the daily miracle of growth and blossoming in the mild, strong all-pervading light - an experience in which earth and matter had their place' (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, London, 1964, p. 519).