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Lot Essay
The Comité Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
Les amoureux de profil was painted in 1950, two years after Chagall's return to Europe when he moved to Vence in the south of France. 'Chagall's new sojourn in the south exerted a decisive influence on his art. 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 he 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).
Chagall's first wife, Bella, had died in 1944. The strong romantic imagery of the wedding couple in Les amoureux de profil is a visual reference to the love he and Bella had shared, and became a recurring theme that runs like a constant thread through Chagall's work. 'It was a vision of "real" love, that love which the artist had to share with his wife Bella..., this celebration by the lovers is equally fantastic, for their joy has levitated from the ground. Their faces are real enough, but now their position is imaginary. Yet by this device Chagall has conveyed the magic carpet of human love, borrowed perhaps from the world of the folk tale, where hero and heroine live happily ever after' (S. Compton, exh. cat., Chagall, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, pp. 15-16).
The theme of the wedding couple is also, however, a reference to a story recounted by Bella in her memoirs, in which she remembered as a child watching a wedding take place in her local town. She described the bride as 'like a bright cloud... first and foremost a long white dress that trailed along the ground like something living, the whole covered by an airy veil. Through it, as through glass, the bride herself seemed far away' (quoted in S. Compton, op. cit., p. 222).
Les amoureux de profil was painted in 1950, two years after Chagall's return to Europe when he moved to Vence in the south of France. 'Chagall's new sojourn in the south exerted a decisive influence on his art. 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 he 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).
Chagall's first wife, Bella, had died in 1944. The strong romantic imagery of the wedding couple in Les amoureux de profil is a visual reference to the love he and Bella had shared, and became a recurring theme that runs like a constant thread through Chagall's work. 'It was a vision of "real" love, that love which the artist had to share with his wife Bella..., this celebration by the lovers is equally fantastic, for their joy has levitated from the ground. Their faces are real enough, but now their position is imaginary. Yet by this device Chagall has conveyed the magic carpet of human love, borrowed perhaps from the world of the folk tale, where hero and heroine live happily ever after' (S. Compton, exh. cat., Chagall, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, pp. 15-16).
The theme of the wedding couple is also, however, a reference to a story recounted by Bella in her memoirs, in which she remembered as a child watching a wedding take place in her local town. She described the bride as 'like a bright cloud... first and foremost a long white dress that trailed along the ground like something living, the whole covered by an airy veil. Through it, as through glass, the bride herself seemed far away' (quoted in S. Compton, op. cit., p. 222).