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Lot Essay
Like many of the oneiric motifs of his prolific oeuvre, Marc Chagall’s unrelenting fascination with spiritual and religious imagery draws from his childhood in the town of Vitebsk, which was enriched by the rituals, ceremonies, and legends of Jewish life. These left a vivid mark on the impressionable young artist’s imagination, and he found himself increasingly returning to his roots throughout his eight-decades long career, filtering his personal history through the prism of expressive and deftly handled color. Chagall’s intricate play of nostalgia, romantic love, and mystical iconography created a distinct visual language and a fanciful and rich documentation of his life.
The elongated bride and groom are frequently featured in Chagall’s work, at times universal, at others explicitly tied to the artist’s Jewish heritage. In Mariage aux poissons, Chagall and his radiant bride stand under a traditional ceremonial canopy known as the chuppa, here treated in striking reds, vivid against a nocturnal background. The artist often portrayed his first wife and great love, Bella Rosenfeld, as a perpetually youthful bride. The two had met when Chagall was still a young man living in his native town, and were married in 1915. In 1944, while exiled in New York during the Second World War, a sudden illness led to Bella’s tragic passing. Chagall evoked his love for Bella in his 1947 autobiography, saying: “I had only to open my bedroom window, and blue air, love, and flowers entered with [Bella]. Dressed all in white or all in black, she has long been flying over my canvases, guiding my art” (M. Chagall, My Life, London, 1957, p. 121). The artist’s iterations of his young bride intensified after her death, and her presence in his work was at times whimsical, at times reverberating with melancholy and longing, and at times a powerful combination of both.
Chagall’s evocative and mystical visual language is compounded by some of the recuring images which have long augmented his inventive dreamscapes: the enigmatic fish stretching across the nocturnal scene, the goat which often stands as an avatar for Chagall himself, the waning moon hanging above the twinkling town, the violin player in the harlequin trousers accompanying the couple on their new journey.
By the time Mariage aux poissons was painted, the artist was married to his second wife, Valentina Brodsky, affectionately known as Vava. In 1952, Chagall was introduced to the Jewish, Russian-born divorcée, and the two were married in July of that year. Vava provided a stable, calming presence for the artist, his newly found peace provided an opportunity to wade into the nostalgic waters of his earlier life. The contentedness he found in his last decades gave him ample room to meditate on his life and loves. The coalescing of his past and present is perhaps hinted at by the repetition of the wedded couple, one submerged in watery, translucent blues in the lower right quadrant, and one irradiated in vibrant colors at left, the two pairs coexisting within the artist’s iconography.
The elongated bride and groom are frequently featured in Chagall’s work, at times universal, at others explicitly tied to the artist’s Jewish heritage. In Mariage aux poissons, Chagall and his radiant bride stand under a traditional ceremonial canopy known as the chuppa, here treated in striking reds, vivid against a nocturnal background. The artist often portrayed his first wife and great love, Bella Rosenfeld, as a perpetually youthful bride. The two had met when Chagall was still a young man living in his native town, and were married in 1915. In 1944, while exiled in New York during the Second World War, a sudden illness led to Bella’s tragic passing. Chagall evoked his love for Bella in his 1947 autobiography, saying: “I had only to open my bedroom window, and blue air, love, and flowers entered with [Bella]. Dressed all in white or all in black, she has long been flying over my canvases, guiding my art” (M. Chagall, My Life, London, 1957, p. 121). The artist’s iterations of his young bride intensified after her death, and her presence in his work was at times whimsical, at times reverberating with melancholy and longing, and at times a powerful combination of both.
Chagall’s evocative and mystical visual language is compounded by some of the recuring images which have long augmented his inventive dreamscapes: the enigmatic fish stretching across the nocturnal scene, the goat which often stands as an avatar for Chagall himself, the waning moon hanging above the twinkling town, the violin player in the harlequin trousers accompanying the couple on their new journey.
By the time Mariage aux poissons was painted, the artist was married to his second wife, Valentina Brodsky, affectionately known as Vava. In 1952, Chagall was introduced to the Jewish, Russian-born divorcée, and the two were married in July of that year. Vava provided a stable, calming presence for the artist, his newly found peace provided an opportunity to wade into the nostalgic waters of his earlier life. The contentedness he found in his last decades gave him ample room to meditate on his life and loves. The coalescing of his past and present is perhaps hinted at by the repetition of the wedded couple, one submerged in watery, translucent blues in the lower right quadrant, and one irradiated in vibrant colors at left, the two pairs coexisting within the artist’s iconography.