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Lot Essay
Over the course of his long career, Chagall earned a reputation as the greatest living Jewish painter. By 1982, he now enjoyed the benefits of this fame and success, living in Saint-Paul de Vence in the south of France. Chagall’s paintings in his twilight years were sweet, nostalgic visions suffused with magic; he continued to reflect upon his childhood, marriage and young family life, and to incorporate those treasured memories into his work. Autour du coq rouge contains several deeply personal symbols, arranged in an idyllic Provençal landscape saturated with sky blue, scarlet red, tangerine orange, lilac purple and hot pink.
This complex, multi-figural composition is organized around the titular red rooster. This central protagonist, along with a goat and cow, implies an agrarian theme, informed by Chagall’s rural upbringing in Russia as well as his observations of the French countryside. White, blue or red roosters recur throughout Chagall’s oeuvre; the rooster alternately appears as a monumental spirit animal floating over Paris or Vitebsk, as loyal steed for young lovers, or as an actual farm dweller, as in the present work. The art historian Franz Meyer, Chagall’s son-in-law, described the religious significance of the rooster in Chagall’s work, compared with other farm animals:
“The fowlyard, too, has its place in Chagall's recollections of his childhood... Of course, as a symbol of the cock has an entirely different and far stranger nature than the quadrupeds, which, despite their four feet, are more closely related to man. For thousands of years it has played a part in religious rites as the embodiment of the forces of the sun and fire. This symbolic meaning still lingers on in Chagall's works, where the cock represents elementary spiritual power” (Marc Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 380).
Autour du coq rouge contains other allusions to Chagall’s Orthodox Jewish upbringing—specifically, the fact that several of the male figures who float around the rooster are wearing yarmulkes, the Yiddish word for the head coverings traditionally worn by men to acknowledge the omnipotence of God. These four male figures in this scene are also representative of the Four Ages of Man—childhood, youth, maturity and old age. The Four Ages of Man is a major allegorical theme throughout the history of art, but especially in French painting beginning in the seventeenth century. Along the lower edge of the composition, a boy lies in the grass, offering a bowl of food to the white goat. A young man on the right side of the canvas holds yet another rooster in his arms. The groom on the left side embraces his swooning bride. He is encouraged in his amorous gesture by an older man, dressed in a suit splattered with multi-colored paint—perhaps a representation of the aging artist himself.
The two female figures in the scene—the bride and the young mother holding her baby—undoubtedly refer to Chagall’s first wife, Bella, who tragically died in 1944. By the time this painting was executed, Chagall had been married for three decades to Valentina “Vava” Brodksy, a Ukrainian native who worked as Chagall’s housekeeper before becoming his second wife in 1952. In fact, by 1982, Chagall had been married to Vava longer than he had been married to Bella. Nonetheless, Chagall’s tender memories of his first love continued to inspire him long after Bella’s death. Their intense early courtship was marked by difficulty, as Chagall left their hometown of Vitebsk to establish himself as an artist in Paris before returning to marry Bella in 1915. Chagall’s adoration of his wife only increased with the birth of their only daughter, Ida, the following year. In Meyer’s words, Bella “was and still is the archetype of the loved one, the bride who leans toward her young groom in so many pictures, the tender girl who dreams in her lover's arms” (ibid., pp. 465-466).
This complex, multi-figural composition is organized around the titular red rooster. This central protagonist, along with a goat and cow, implies an agrarian theme, informed by Chagall’s rural upbringing in Russia as well as his observations of the French countryside. White, blue or red roosters recur throughout Chagall’s oeuvre; the rooster alternately appears as a monumental spirit animal floating over Paris or Vitebsk, as loyal steed for young lovers, or as an actual farm dweller, as in the present work. The art historian Franz Meyer, Chagall’s son-in-law, described the religious significance of the rooster in Chagall’s work, compared with other farm animals:
“The fowlyard, too, has its place in Chagall's recollections of his childhood... Of course, as a symbol of the cock has an entirely different and far stranger nature than the quadrupeds, which, despite their four feet, are more closely related to man. For thousands of years it has played a part in religious rites as the embodiment of the forces of the sun and fire. This symbolic meaning still lingers on in Chagall's works, where the cock represents elementary spiritual power” (Marc Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 380).
Autour du coq rouge contains other allusions to Chagall’s Orthodox Jewish upbringing—specifically, the fact that several of the male figures who float around the rooster are wearing yarmulkes, the Yiddish word for the head coverings traditionally worn by men to acknowledge the omnipotence of God. These four male figures in this scene are also representative of the Four Ages of Man—childhood, youth, maturity and old age. The Four Ages of Man is a major allegorical theme throughout the history of art, but especially in French painting beginning in the seventeenth century. Along the lower edge of the composition, a boy lies in the grass, offering a bowl of food to the white goat. A young man on the right side of the canvas holds yet another rooster in his arms. The groom on the left side embraces his swooning bride. He is encouraged in his amorous gesture by an older man, dressed in a suit splattered with multi-colored paint—perhaps a representation of the aging artist himself.
The two female figures in the scene—the bride and the young mother holding her baby—undoubtedly refer to Chagall’s first wife, Bella, who tragically died in 1944. By the time this painting was executed, Chagall had been married for three decades to Valentina “Vava” Brodksy, a Ukrainian native who worked as Chagall’s housekeeper before becoming his second wife in 1952. In fact, by 1982, Chagall had been married to Vava longer than he had been married to Bella. Nonetheless, Chagall’s tender memories of his first love continued to inspire him long after Bella’s death. Their intense early courtship was marked by difficulty, as Chagall left their hometown of Vitebsk to establish himself as an artist in Paris before returning to marry Bella in 1915. Chagall’s adoration of his wife only increased with the birth of their only daughter, Ida, the following year. In Meyer’s words, Bella “was and still is the archetype of the loved one, the bride who leans toward her young groom in so many pictures, the tender girl who dreams in her lover's arms” (ibid., pp. 465-466).