SP 5425
MARC CHAGALL Vitebsk, Russia 1887 - 1985 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France
Vase de fleurs dans la fenêtre
Signed lower right: Chagall Gouache and pastel on paper laid down on board: 24 3/16 x 19 7/16 in / 61.5 x 49.4 cm Frame size: 34 in / 88.6 x 76.8 cm
Painted in 1935-36
Provenance: James Vigeveno Galleries, Los Angeles Joan Fontaine (1917-2013), Los Angeles, acquired from the above circa 1945 and sold to benefit The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Monterey County, California
Exhibited: Pasadena Art Museum, Seventieth Anniversary Exhibition, Marc Chagall, 26th May – 28th July 1957, no. 28 (as Flowers, 1938)
The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work and is recorded by them as No: 2008086.
“Supernatural” declared the French poet and art critic, Guillaume Apollinaire, upon seeing Chagall’s work for the first time. An apt description of this remarkable, luxuriant flower piece whose fantastic, iridescent forms entwine into rich, intricate layers of texture and tone. Rising from a small, central vase, Chagall’s intense and exubrant flowers almost fill the canvas, the vibrant blooms exploding from their verdant, blue/green foliage like fireworks. A delicate balance of painting and drawing, the arrangement defines and densely layers a variety of flora, contrasting luscious passages of brilliant, opaque colour with bright patches of paper, revealing the artist’s sophisticated gouache technique and power as a colourist.
A lyrical painter-poet in his own right, Chagall’s vital vision of miraculous bounty is framed, but not bounded by an open window on the left with two ethereal figures delineated beneath in a pale, otherworldly predella. In contrast to the bright, substantial and weighty flowers, the ambiguous surrounding space is painted and drawn in cool, watery blue tones encouraging the sense of dreamlike apparition. The distinctive cropped goat recalls the Russian artist’s beloved village of Vitebsk, as well as pastoral scenes from his illustrations for Nokolai Gogol’s Dead Souls (1923-27) and the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (1925-26). The woman looking over her shoulder towards the goat while leaning out of the picture and into an embrace is Chagall’s wife and muse, Bella Rosenfeld, whose masterful portrait, Bella in Green, the artist also completed at this time1. Writing of their courtship in his autobiography, Chagall recollected, as if in explanation of the present work: ‘I only had to open my window, and blue air, love, and flowers entered with her’.2 Chagall first painted bouquets of flowers in the early 1920s as a romantic extension of his symbolic vocabulary in representations of himself with his adored wife. From this point onwards the vase of flowers became a perennial theme in his work, inextricably linked to the celebration and evocation of love. A vivid combination of memory, myth and association, Vase de fleurs dans la fenêtre is an expression of pure creative joy and the vital brilliance of life itself.
The Oscar-winning actress and Hitchcock heroine, Joan Fontaine purchased this picture in Los Angeles during the 1940s as she became a leading lady of the silver screen, perhaps most memorably in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1940). She won the Academy Award for best actress in 1941 for Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion opposite Cary Grant, took the title role in Jane Eyre (1944) with Orson Welles, earned another Oscar nomination for The Constant Nymph (1943) and won critical acclaim for her performance in Max Ophül’s, Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948).
Bouquet with flying lovers, c. 1934-47 Village street c. 1930s Lovers among lilacs, 1930 Oil on canvas: 130.5 x 97 ½ cm Oil on canvas: 46 x 38 cm Oil on canvas: 131 x 89 ½ cm Tate [N05804] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Metropolitan Museum of [1978.156] Art, New York [2007.257.2]
1 Bella in Green, 1934-5, oil on canvas: 99.5 x 81 cm, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Chagall met Bella in Vitebsk in 1909. They married in 1915. 2 Marc Chagall cited in My Life, Peter Owen, London, 1965, p. 121. Chagall began writing in 1921-22. Mein Leben was originally published as a series of etchings in Germany in 1923. It was translated by Bella and published in French as Ma Vie in 1931.
MARC CHAGALL Vitebsk, Russia 1887 - 1985 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France
Marc Chagall was born on the 7th July 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia. From 1907 to 1910, he studied in Saint Petersburg, at the Imperial Society for the Protection of the Arts and later with Léon Bakst. In 1910, he moved to Paris, where he associated with Guillaume Apollinaire and Robert Delaunay and encountered Fauvism and Cubism. He participated in the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne in 1912. His first solo show was held in 1914 at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. Chagall visited Russia in 1914, and was prevented from returning to Paris by the outbreak of war.
Chagall settled in Vitebsk, where he was appointed Commissar for Art in 1918. He founded the Vitebsk Popular Art School and directed it until disagreements with the Suprematists resulted in his resignation in 1920. He moved to Moscow and executed his first stage designs for the State Jewish Chamber Theater there. After a sojourn in Berlin, Chagall returned to Paris in 1923 and met Ambroise Vollard. His first retrospective took place in 1924 at the Galerie Barbazanges- Hodebert, Paris. During the 1930s, he traveled to Palestine, the Netherlands, Spain, Poland, and Italy. In 1933, the Kunsthalle Basel held a major retrospective of his work.
During World War II, Chagall fled to the United States. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, gave him a retrospective in 1946. He settled permanently in France in 1948 and exhibited in Paris, Amsterdam, and London. During 1951, he visited Israel and executed his first sculptures. The following year, the artist travelled in Greece and Italy. During the 1960s, Chagall continued to travel widely, often in association with large-scale commissions he received. Among these were windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, installed in 1962; a ceiling for the Paris Opéra, installed in 1964; a window for the United Nations building, New York, installed in 1964; murals for the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, installed in 1967; and windows for the cathedral in Metz, France, installed in 1968. An exhibition of the artist’s work from 1967 to 1977 was held at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, in 1977–78, and a major retrospective was held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1985. Chagall died March 28, 1985, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France.