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拍品专文
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
A magnificent bouquet of blossoming flowers dominates Marc Chagall’s radiant Fleurs dans la lumière of 1978. Impastoed daubs of yellow, green and red tones fill almost the entirety of the canvas, a luminous display of colour and an affirmation of abundance and life. Framing this jubilant explosion of blooms is another, smaller flowering plant, while a group of oranges, limes and a lemon lie at the foot of the vase, further emphasising the sense of plenitude that radiates from this large painting. These qualities reflect Chagall’s life at the time that he painted Fleurs dans la lumière. Living and working in Vence in the sun-soaked South of France, accompanied by his wife, Valentina or ‘Vava’ Brodsky, he enjoyed a life of peace and happy contentment, describing his life as, ‘a bouquet of roses’ (M. Chagall quoted in, S. Alexander, Marc Chagall: A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 492).
At the time that he painted Fleurs dans la lumière, the floral still-life had come to dominate Chagall’s art. This motif had first entered his painting many years previously, in the mid-1920s. Having returned to France from his native Russia in 1923, the artist developed a new feeling for nature, and was particularly enchanted by flowers, finding them to be the embodiment of the French landscape. Travelling south to the Midi and Côte d’Azur, he quickly fell under the spell of the intense light and radiant colours of the landscape. ‘There in the South, for the first time in my life’, he recalled, ‘I came into contact with a flower-filled greenery such as I had never seen in my native city’ (Chagall, quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, Connecticut, 1995, p. 172). It was in the south of France that Chagall first began his series of flower paintings, and upon his permanent move there in 1950, this motif came to define his late oeuvre.
The Greek writer and publisher Tériade, who published many of Chagall’s etchings, wrote of these works, ‘To see the world through bouquets! Huge, monstrous bouquets in ringing profusion, haunting brilliance. Were we to see [Chagall] only through these abundances gathered at random from gardens… and naturally balanced, we could wish for no more precious joy!’ (E. Tériade, ‘Chagall and Romantic Painting’, in J. Baal-Teshuva, ibid., p. 136).
Fleurs dans la lumière also encapsulates Chagall’s unique ability at distilling the radiant light and colour of his surroundings into pictorial form. In the present work, the combination of rich, impastoed oil paint and the soft, luminous background creates a wondrous vision of light and colour. Françoise Gilot, an artist and former muse and lover of Picasso, recalled that the Spanish artist had once remarked, ‘When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is… Some of the last things he’s done in Vence convince me that there’s never been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has.’ (Picasso, quoted in F. Gilot & C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 282).
A magnificent bouquet of blossoming flowers dominates Marc Chagall’s radiant Fleurs dans la lumière of 1978. Impastoed daubs of yellow, green and red tones fill almost the entirety of the canvas, a luminous display of colour and an affirmation of abundance and life. Framing this jubilant explosion of blooms is another, smaller flowering plant, while a group of oranges, limes and a lemon lie at the foot of the vase, further emphasising the sense of plenitude that radiates from this large painting. These qualities reflect Chagall’s life at the time that he painted Fleurs dans la lumière. Living and working in Vence in the sun-soaked South of France, accompanied by his wife, Valentina or ‘Vava’ Brodsky, he enjoyed a life of peace and happy contentment, describing his life as, ‘a bouquet of roses’ (M. Chagall quoted in, S. Alexander, Marc Chagall: A Biography, New York, 1978, p. 492).
At the time that he painted Fleurs dans la lumière, the floral still-life had come to dominate Chagall’s art. This motif had first entered his painting many years previously, in the mid-1920s. Having returned to France from his native Russia in 1923, the artist developed a new feeling for nature, and was particularly enchanted by flowers, finding them to be the embodiment of the French landscape. Travelling south to the Midi and Côte d’Azur, he quickly fell under the spell of the intense light and radiant colours of the landscape. ‘There in the South, for the first time in my life’, he recalled, ‘I came into contact with a flower-filled greenery such as I had never seen in my native city’ (Chagall, quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, Connecticut, 1995, p. 172). It was in the south of France that Chagall first began his series of flower paintings, and upon his permanent move there in 1950, this motif came to define his late oeuvre.
The Greek writer and publisher Tériade, who published many of Chagall’s etchings, wrote of these works, ‘To see the world through bouquets! Huge, monstrous bouquets in ringing profusion, haunting brilliance. Were we to see [Chagall] only through these abundances gathered at random from gardens… and naturally balanced, we could wish for no more precious joy!’ (E. Tériade, ‘Chagall and Romantic Painting’, in J. Baal-Teshuva, ibid., p. 136).
Fleurs dans la lumière also encapsulates Chagall’s unique ability at distilling the radiant light and colour of his surroundings into pictorial form. In the present work, the combination of rich, impastoed oil paint and the soft, luminous background creates a wondrous vision of light and colour. Françoise Gilot, an artist and former muse and lover of Picasso, recalled that the Spanish artist had once remarked, ‘When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is… Some of the last things he’s done in Vence convince me that there’s never been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has.’ (Picasso, quoted in F. Gilot & C. Lake, Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 282).