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拍品专文
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Painted in 1964, Les Paysans, Paris depicts an idyllic, pastoral, scene. The farmer and his wife toil the land, surrounded by their precious farm animals that provide sustenance and the bouquet, referencing abundance, fecundity and romantic love, as is so often the central figure of Chagall’s work. The farming couple presented here can be assumed to be a motif representing the lovers, a strong motif within Chagall’s visual lexicon, nearly always tracing back to his overwhelming first love, Bella Rosenfeld, who remained his muse even after her tragic death in 1944, and also, happiness recaptured with the stable second marriage he enjoyed with Valentina “Vava” Brodsky from 1952.
Whilst this scene is situated by title in Paris, the small houses and farm animals naturally bear resemblance to Chagall’s earlier depictions of the little houses of Vitebsk, his home town and forever an echo in his landscapes. For Chagall, Vitebsk was the sacred place that he met his beloved Bella, whom he married in 1915. The ensuring events of the 20th Century meant that both his hometown and his beloved Bella were forever committed to his memory by the end of the 1940s, Bella having died in 1944 and Vitebsk having changed irrevocably as a result of two World Wars. As such, Les Paysans, Paris muses on Chagall’s wonderful and wistful memories of the past, also infused with a happiness in the present as he looks back with joy in these memories.
Full of bursting colour, this canvas shows an interesting departure in the artist’s approach, the blocks of strong colour correlating not directly to the figurative elements beneath, but operating independently of them. This serves to unite all elements of the composition in a rainbow spectrum of the landscape in all its abundance; the yellow of the sky and the harvest, the red of the animal and its warmth, it’s blood, the purple of the houses, melding with the red into the flowers and light blue of the sky and the deep electric blue of night evoking Chagall’s nocturnal scenes.
This sense of harmony with the landscape was embodied from Chagall’s first experiences in Vitebsk and remained pertinent in his mind, appearing in his oeuvre throughout his entire career, as he remarked: “The fact that I made use of cows, milkmaids, roosters and provincial Russian architecture as my source forms is because they are part of the environment from which I spring and which undoubtedly left the deepest impression on my visual memory of the experiences I have,” Chagall explained (quoted in B. Harshav, (ed.), Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Stanford, 2003, p. 83).
Painted in 1964, Les Paysans, Paris depicts an idyllic, pastoral, scene. The farmer and his wife toil the land, surrounded by their precious farm animals that provide sustenance and the bouquet, referencing abundance, fecundity and romantic love, as is so often the central figure of Chagall’s work. The farming couple presented here can be assumed to be a motif representing the lovers, a strong motif within Chagall’s visual lexicon, nearly always tracing back to his overwhelming first love, Bella Rosenfeld, who remained his muse even after her tragic death in 1944, and also, happiness recaptured with the stable second marriage he enjoyed with Valentina “Vava” Brodsky from 1952.
Whilst this scene is situated by title in Paris, the small houses and farm animals naturally bear resemblance to Chagall’s earlier depictions of the little houses of Vitebsk, his home town and forever an echo in his landscapes. For Chagall, Vitebsk was the sacred place that he met his beloved Bella, whom he married in 1915. The ensuring events of the 20th Century meant that both his hometown and his beloved Bella were forever committed to his memory by the end of the 1940s, Bella having died in 1944 and Vitebsk having changed irrevocably as a result of two World Wars. As such, Les Paysans, Paris muses on Chagall’s wonderful and wistful memories of the past, also infused with a happiness in the present as he looks back with joy in these memories.
Full of bursting colour, this canvas shows an interesting departure in the artist’s approach, the blocks of strong colour correlating not directly to the figurative elements beneath, but operating independently of them. This serves to unite all elements of the composition in a rainbow spectrum of the landscape in all its abundance; the yellow of the sky and the harvest, the red of the animal and its warmth, it’s blood, the purple of the houses, melding with the red into the flowers and light blue of the sky and the deep electric blue of night evoking Chagall’s nocturnal scenes.
This sense of harmony with the landscape was embodied from Chagall’s first experiences in Vitebsk and remained pertinent in his mind, appearing in his oeuvre throughout his entire career, as he remarked: “The fact that I made use of cows, milkmaids, roosters and provincial Russian architecture as my source forms is because they are part of the environment from which I spring and which undoubtedly left the deepest impression on my visual memory of the experiences I have,” Chagall explained (quoted in B. Harshav, (ed.), Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Stanford, 2003, p. 83).