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拍品专文
The Comité Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this painting.
Marc Chagall's Le quai aux fleurs was painted in 1953, and forms part of his 'Paris' series, acclaimed as one of the first major groups of works that he created in the wake of the Second World War. Largely painted in the South of France, this celebrated series comprises twenty-nine oils which were shown together, including Le quai aux fleurs, at the Galerie Maeght in 1954 in an exhibition which garnered much praise and marked the beginning of a new, vibrant phase in his work. This series would also spawn a group of related lithographs celebrating the French capital. Le quai aux fleurs, like its fellow pictures in this series, sings with the poetry of Chagall's unique vision; romance, flowers, a horse's head and a cityscape are intertwined in this poetic, dreamlike composition.
This picture's title is in a sense a pun: on the one hand, the viewer can perceive a quai in the background, in the lower right-hand corner, as well as the flowers that Chagall so enjoyed including in his pictures and which add a luminous explosion of colour to night-shrouded scenes such as this. On the other hand, the main building visible in that sliver of cityscape is recognisable as the bell tower of the Conciergerie, the ancient palace that forms a part of the complex of the Palais de Justice and which is located near the Quai aux Fleurs on the Ile de la Cité. In many of the pictures in the series, Chagall showed some of the other landmark buildings of Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, that icon of modernism, and the various bridges over the River Seine.
Indeed, despite its vertical composition, Le quai aux fleurs shares several similarities with Les ponts de la Seine, which is now in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Like that picture, it features the theme of maternity as well as the colourful animals that were such an intrinsic part of Chagall's visual lexicon, against a sprawling backdrop of the Parisian landscape. Critics at the time saw the theme of the mother and child as one with religious significance, while Jackie Wullschlager has pointed out that the original sketches on the subject had been executed around his visits to France from the United States during the mid-1940s, when Chagall's lover Virginia McNeil had given birth to his son David, thus adding a layer of biographical significance to a universal theme. Indeed, this cuts to the heart of Chagall's art: he managed to present subjects relating to all human life and to love with a directness that clearly tapped into his own experience. In Le quai aux fleurs, this is clearly the case: there is an intriguing balance between the city, the cosmopolitan Paris, which is shown in the background, and the intimacy of the scene which dominates so much of the canvas.
Chagall's relationship with Paris had lasted since 1910, when he had gone there on a near pilgrimage, a young artist seeking inspiration from the capital of the avant garde. It was there that he had begun to forge his own reputation and his incredible combination of colourism and highly personal symbolism. Paris remained an important touchstone for him throughout much of the rest of his life; indeed, he even acquired an apartment in 1957 on the quai d'Anjou, in the Ile Saint Louis which abuts the Ile de la Cité upon which the Conciergerie is located. However, it had taken time for Paris to enter his work with such an impact as it did in the series of pictures he showed together at the Galerie Maeght, alongside Le quai aux fleurs, in 1954. At the time of the exhibition, he wrote in Verve of, 'Paris, my heart's reflection. I would like to blend with it, not to be alone with myself' (Chagall, quoted in J. Wullschlager, Chagall: Love and Exile, London, 2008, p. 483). This exhibition, and each individual picture within it, formed a paean to that city, which had become a new home for the exile and émigré over the years. Now, he celebrated it in a distinct way, with a palette which he linked to Impressionism rather than the expressionistically heightened colours of his earlier works. 'When I first came to Paris, I was instinctively against the realism which I saw everywhere,' he explained, differentiating between his early experiences of the city and his later ones. 'Upon my return to France, at the end of the war, I had the vision of glowing colours, not decorative and screaming ones, and I rediscovered Claude Monet, with his natural source of colours' (Chagall, quoted in B. Harshav et al. ,eds., Marc Chagall on Art and Culture: Including the First Book on Chagall's Art, Stanford, 2003, p. 137).
It was during his first visits back to Paris in the wake of the Second World War, which he had spent largely in the United States of America having escaped France in 1941, that he had begun to be enchanted once more by the city. Then, he was visiting both as a widower, following the death of his beloved Bella in the United States in 1944, and as a father of a new child by Virginia. There was, therefore, a confluence of past, present and future that channelled itself into this impressive series. Chagall talked in terms of, 'the Paris of which I dreamed in America and which I rediscovered enriched by new life, as if I had to be born again, dry my tears and start crying again. Absence, war, suffering were needed for all that to awaken in me and become the frame for my thoughts and my life. But that is only possible for one who can keep his roots. To keep the earth on one's roots and find another earth, that is a real miracle' (Chagall, quoted in F. Meyer, Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 329).
The impact of Chagall's ode to Paris was clear and immediate. Le quai aux fleurs and its sister pictures were created largely in the South of France, based on memories and feelings of Paris, and in a new atmosphere of romance and contentedness that was related to his recent marriage, only the year before, to Vava, or Valentina Brodsky. Discussing the Galerie Maeght exhibition, Wullschlager has explained: 'This was Chagall's first major show in France since the landmark retrospective in 1947 that had won him such prestige and a wide young audience in Paris. It was also his first exhibition since his marriage to Vava, and it demonstrated a new ambition, scale, and consistency of vision that had been absent from his work in the decade after Bella's death. The entire cycle... is a lyrical homage to the city that had been his and Bella's second home' (Wullschlager, op. cit., 2008, p. 482).
It was only fitting that such an emotionally-keyed subject and such colourist tours de force met with great acclaim. In Studio International, Le quai aux fleurs was one of the works singled out for praise in an article that enthused: 'The instant impression one has on seeing these canvases grouped together is much like what Paris must have appeared to Chagall when he saw it for the first time. The paintings on the walls of the Galerie Maeght glow and sparkle like stained glass' (A. Watt, 'Paris Commentary', in Studio International, vol. 148, July - December 1954, p. 159).
Marc Chagall's Le quai aux fleurs was painted in 1953, and forms part of his 'Paris' series, acclaimed as one of the first major groups of works that he created in the wake of the Second World War. Largely painted in the South of France, this celebrated series comprises twenty-nine oils which were shown together, including Le quai aux fleurs, at the Galerie Maeght in 1954 in an exhibition which garnered much praise and marked the beginning of a new, vibrant phase in his work. This series would also spawn a group of related lithographs celebrating the French capital. Le quai aux fleurs, like its fellow pictures in this series, sings with the poetry of Chagall's unique vision; romance, flowers, a horse's head and a cityscape are intertwined in this poetic, dreamlike composition.
This picture's title is in a sense a pun: on the one hand, the viewer can perceive a quai in the background, in the lower right-hand corner, as well as the flowers that Chagall so enjoyed including in his pictures and which add a luminous explosion of colour to night-shrouded scenes such as this. On the other hand, the main building visible in that sliver of cityscape is recognisable as the bell tower of the Conciergerie, the ancient palace that forms a part of the complex of the Palais de Justice and which is located near the Quai aux Fleurs on the Ile de la Cité. In many of the pictures in the series, Chagall showed some of the other landmark buildings of Paris, including the Eiffel Tower, that icon of modernism, and the various bridges over the River Seine.
Indeed, despite its vertical composition, Le quai aux fleurs shares several similarities with Les ponts de la Seine, which is now in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Like that picture, it features the theme of maternity as well as the colourful animals that were such an intrinsic part of Chagall's visual lexicon, against a sprawling backdrop of the Parisian landscape. Critics at the time saw the theme of the mother and child as one with religious significance, while Jackie Wullschlager has pointed out that the original sketches on the subject had been executed around his visits to France from the United States during the mid-1940s, when Chagall's lover Virginia McNeil had given birth to his son David, thus adding a layer of biographical significance to a universal theme. Indeed, this cuts to the heart of Chagall's art: he managed to present subjects relating to all human life and to love with a directness that clearly tapped into his own experience. In Le quai aux fleurs, this is clearly the case: there is an intriguing balance between the city, the cosmopolitan Paris, which is shown in the background, and the intimacy of the scene which dominates so much of the canvas.
Chagall's relationship with Paris had lasted since 1910, when he had gone there on a near pilgrimage, a young artist seeking inspiration from the capital of the avant garde. It was there that he had begun to forge his own reputation and his incredible combination of colourism and highly personal symbolism. Paris remained an important touchstone for him throughout much of the rest of his life; indeed, he even acquired an apartment in 1957 on the quai d'Anjou, in the Ile Saint Louis which abuts the Ile de la Cité upon which the Conciergerie is located. However, it had taken time for Paris to enter his work with such an impact as it did in the series of pictures he showed together at the Galerie Maeght, alongside Le quai aux fleurs, in 1954. At the time of the exhibition, he wrote in Verve of, 'Paris, my heart's reflection. I would like to blend with it, not to be alone with myself' (Chagall, quoted in J. Wullschlager, Chagall: Love and Exile, London, 2008, p. 483). This exhibition, and each individual picture within it, formed a paean to that city, which had become a new home for the exile and émigré over the years. Now, he celebrated it in a distinct way, with a palette which he linked to Impressionism rather than the expressionistically heightened colours of his earlier works. 'When I first came to Paris, I was instinctively against the realism which I saw everywhere,' he explained, differentiating between his early experiences of the city and his later ones. 'Upon my return to France, at the end of the war, I had the vision of glowing colours, not decorative and screaming ones, and I rediscovered Claude Monet, with his natural source of colours' (Chagall, quoted in B. Harshav et al. ,eds., Marc Chagall on Art and Culture: Including the First Book on Chagall's Art, Stanford, 2003, p. 137).
It was during his first visits back to Paris in the wake of the Second World War, which he had spent largely in the United States of America having escaped France in 1941, that he had begun to be enchanted once more by the city. Then, he was visiting both as a widower, following the death of his beloved Bella in the United States in 1944, and as a father of a new child by Virginia. There was, therefore, a confluence of past, present and future that channelled itself into this impressive series. Chagall talked in terms of, 'the Paris of which I dreamed in America and which I rediscovered enriched by new life, as if I had to be born again, dry my tears and start crying again. Absence, war, suffering were needed for all that to awaken in me and become the frame for my thoughts and my life. But that is only possible for one who can keep his roots. To keep the earth on one's roots and find another earth, that is a real miracle' (Chagall, quoted in F. Meyer, Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 329).
The impact of Chagall's ode to Paris was clear and immediate. Le quai aux fleurs and its sister pictures were created largely in the South of France, based on memories and feelings of Paris, and in a new atmosphere of romance and contentedness that was related to his recent marriage, only the year before, to Vava, or Valentina Brodsky. Discussing the Galerie Maeght exhibition, Wullschlager has explained: 'This was Chagall's first major show in France since the landmark retrospective in 1947 that had won him such prestige and a wide young audience in Paris. It was also his first exhibition since his marriage to Vava, and it demonstrated a new ambition, scale, and consistency of vision that had been absent from his work in the decade after Bella's death. The entire cycle... is a lyrical homage to the city that had been his and Bella's second home' (Wullschlager, op. cit., 2008, p. 482).
It was only fitting that such an emotionally-keyed subject and such colourist tours de force met with great acclaim. In Studio International, Le quai aux fleurs was one of the works singled out for praise in an article that enthused: 'The instant impression one has on seeing these canvases grouped together is much like what Paris must have appeared to Chagall when he saw it for the first time. The paintings on the walls of the Galerie Maeght glow and sparkle like stained glass' (A. Watt, 'Paris Commentary', in Studio International, vol. 148, July - December 1954, p. 159).