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Lot Essay
Marc Chagall's Ecuyère au bouquet sur un cheval, executed in the mid-1950s, is a romantic vision of a nude equestrienne. Standing astride a tangerine horse against a background of royal blue, the woman's body sways gracefully, her silhouette as slender and pale as a crescent moon. Her naked flesh is ornamented by a delicate floral pattern that blooms across her rounded hips, echoing the decoration on her horse's saddle. She and the animal assume the same demure posture; she lowers her head and gestures towards the viewer with a simple bouquet of yellow, white and red flowers.
Chagall's lifelong fascination with circus performers, and its influence upon his art, is well documented. The athletic figure of the equestrienne, who performed acrobatic feats while on horseback in the circus ring, was a recurring heroine in the artist's imagination, and appears frequently in his work. As Chagall famously reflected, ''For me a circus is a magic show that appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing. It is profound. These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have themselves a home in my visions...I would like to go up to that bareback rider who has just reappeared, smiling; her dress, a bouquet of flowers. I would circle her with my flowered and unflowered years. On my knees, I would tell her wishes and dreams, not of this world" (quoted in Le Cirque, Paintings, 1969-1980, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1981).
Chagall executed Ecuyère au bouquet sur un cheval around 1955, a few years after he purchased Les Collines, his verdant villa in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, near Nice. He lived there with his younger Russian wife, Valentina Brodsky, whom he had married in 1952. Then in his mid-sixties, Chagall was rejuvenated by both the landscape of the French Riviera, as well as the honeymoon period that he enjoyed with his new love. Inspired by the brilliant water and light of the Mediterranean, he began to incorporate bright, rich blues into his work. It was also during this decade that Chagall experimented with new media: printmaking, mosaic designs, as well as multi-media paintings on paper.
Chagall's lifelong fascination with circus performers, and its influence upon his art, is well documented. The athletic figure of the equestrienne, who performed acrobatic feats while on horseback in the circus ring, was a recurring heroine in the artist's imagination, and appears frequently in his work. As Chagall famously reflected, ''For me a circus is a magic show that appears and disappears like a world. A circus is disturbing. It is profound. These clowns, bareback riders and acrobats have themselves a home in my visions...I would like to go up to that bareback rider who has just reappeared, smiling; her dress, a bouquet of flowers. I would circle her with my flowered and unflowered years. On my knees, I would tell her wishes and dreams, not of this world" (quoted in Le Cirque, Paintings, 1969-1980, exh. cat., Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, 1981).
Chagall executed Ecuyère au bouquet sur un cheval around 1955, a few years after he purchased Les Collines, his verdant villa in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, near Nice. He lived there with his younger Russian wife, Valentina Brodsky, whom he had married in 1952. Then in his mid-sixties, Chagall was rejuvenated by both the landscape of the French Riviera, as well as the honeymoon period that he enjoyed with his new love. Inspired by the brilliant water and light of the Mediterranean, he began to incorporate bright, rich blues into his work. It was also during this decade that Chagall experimented with new media: printmaking, mosaic designs, as well as multi-media paintings on paper.