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Lot Essay
Painted in 1965-1970, Le peintre et la crucifixion dates from a period of stability and contentment in Chagall’s life. Having settled near Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the South of France in the mid-1960s, the artist and his second wife, Valentina “Vava” Brodsky were living in a comfortable house called ‘Les Collines’ with large windows and a garden filled with olive trees. Painted late in the artist’s career, the present work can be seen as an amalgamation of some of the foremost themes that Chagall had examined throughout his oeuvre; religion, memory and fantasy.
The Bible had served as artistic inspiration for Chagall throughout his life, particularly during the Second World War when he painted a number of scenes of the crucifixion, the figure of Christ representing the suffering of the Jews and of people across Europe. "If I were not a Jew, I wouldn't have been an artist," Chagall once proclaimed, "or I would have been a different artist altogether" (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 170). From his earliest work onward, the artist included subjects drawn from Jewish culture and folklore, evoking the atmosphere in which he was raised in the Russian town of Vitebsk. During the 1950s and 1960s—after Vitebsk had been nearly completely destroyed in the Second World War, Chagall returned, even more insistently, to the legacy of his shtetl upbringing. In the present work, the artist himself towers over the composition, standing before a large canvas amidst the humble homes of his Russian birthplace. A nostalgic paean to the Vitebsk of his memories, bathed in the rich, deep blue of night, here Chagall creates a celebratory evocation not only of the lost homeland of his past, but also his attempts as a painter to memorialize it for eternity.
The Bible had served as artistic inspiration for Chagall throughout his life, particularly during the Second World War when he painted a number of scenes of the crucifixion, the figure of Christ representing the suffering of the Jews and of people across Europe. "If I were not a Jew, I wouldn't have been an artist," Chagall once proclaimed, "or I would have been a different artist altogether" (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, ed., Chagall: A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 170). From his earliest work onward, the artist included subjects drawn from Jewish culture and folklore, evoking the atmosphere in which he was raised in the Russian town of Vitebsk. During the 1950s and 1960s—after Vitebsk had been nearly completely destroyed in the Second World War, Chagall returned, even more insistently, to the legacy of his shtetl upbringing. In the present work, the artist himself towers over the composition, standing before a large canvas amidst the humble homes of his Russian birthplace. A nostalgic paean to the Vitebsk of his memories, bathed in the rich, deep blue of night, here Chagall creates a celebratory evocation not only of the lost homeland of his past, but also his attempts as a painter to memorialize it for eternity.