L'Apparition I (Kornfeld 44II)

This early etching, made shortly after Chagall left Moscow and settled in Paris in 1923, is based on an earlier painting of the same subject from 1917. The scene invokes the iconography of The Annunciation as the young artist seated at his easel takes the place of the Virgin. He is startled by the appearance of the angelic visitor, with the arm raised in the traditional sign of benediction, in this case the gift of artistic inspiration. Chagall would later say that 'painting appeared to me like a window through which I could fly away toward another world'.

In the catalogue raisonné of Chagall's early etchings published in 1970, Kornfeld records only one impression of the second state of this etching, in the archive of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. Another example, however, came to light at Kornfeld & Klipstein on 21 June 1973, lot 109. A comparison between the photograph of this lot and the present impression suggests that it is a third, undocumented impression of this very rare state.