36 1/8 x 28 3/4 ins
This painting is a ‘Dream Love Poem’. It shows Bella, the artist’s wife and the flowers she bought in a local market. And was painted in the spring of 1926, a time of great peace and happiness in Chagall’s life.
He and his family were staying in the small Mediterranean fishing village of Mourillon near Toulon. It was his first visit to the South of France. And he fell in love with its sunlit beauty.
His son-in-law Franz Meyer, in his major monograph based largely on his conversations with Chagall, describes this period; and why this painting reflects a particular moment of joy and freedom in Chagall’s life.
The liberty and success he found in France, the sense of his own powers, and the discovery of a joy-giving world of light and color, lent his life a vital elation that makes him say today ‘That was the happiest time of my life.'
Chagall was overwhelmed by the brightness of the sea. The Mediterranean affected him as a triumphal song of color in the vast, luminous space. He was also thrilled by the bunches of flowers Bella brought home from market day after day. Their dense, pure, bright colors served him as a link with the landscape. In many of his pictures a bouquet is silhouetted against the sea on a chair, a small table, or the windowsill. Delicate panicles, campanulas, and the great white calyces of arum lilies stand out against the thick foliage, bearers of light that also reflect the brightness of the distance. In these pictures, the sea itself is indicated by a few sparse motifs – bits of nearby coastline, a distant promontory, sailboats.
In one picture, Bella is sitting on a terrace overlooking the sea; in another (this painting) she is lying on the beach in the posture of the girl with the fan.’
See: Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, London 1963. P.348, 530.
This painting with its marvellous exuberance and joy, its richness and luminosity, seems perfectly to reflect these sentiments.
The painting has remained, until its recent acquisition, in the same private collection since 1935.
The flowers, with their wreathing movement, passionate exuberance and eroticism, are in a very real sense also human. Their richness of colour and texture – the paint in part heavily impastoed – contrasts wonderfully with the watercolour-like transparency of the thinly painted luminous sea and sky, to evoke a dream-like vision.
This is the only painting reproduced in Franz Meyer’s book, which shows flowers ‘seated’ on a chair. And given Chagall’s visionary poetic imagination, there is good reason to believe that he has quite consciously portrayed his very being – at that particular and gloriously happy moment in his life – in these flowers, as they soar ‘intoxicated with joy’ upwards and towards the loving, waiting Bella.
And steeped in the Bible since early childhood, has Chagall not also expressed a profound link – perhaps subconscious – with The Burning Bush and its personification of human thought.
Fifty years later, he was to write:
Ever since my earliest youth, I have been fascinated by the Bible. I have always believed, as I still believe, that it is the greatest source of poetry of all time. Ever since then, I have sought its reflection in life and Art. The Bible is like an echo of nature, and this is the secret I have endeavoured to transmit.
During the course of my life and to the best of my ability, and in spite of the fact that I sometimes feel I am quite another being, that I was born, so to speak, between earth and sky, that the world is a great desert through which my soul wanders like a flaming torch, I have created these pictures in unison with this youthful dream.
Are not painting and color always inspired by Love?
Surely painting is merely a reflection of the inner self and thus transcends mere brushwork which becomes irrelevant. One’s character and message are contained in color and line.
Since all life tends inevitably towards its end, each of us should try to color his own with the colors of love and hope. For myself, perfection in Art, as in life, is rooted in the Bible. When this spirit is lacking, merely mechanical factors of logic and construction, whether in Art or life, will never bear fruit.
In Art, as in life, everything is possible, so long as it is based on Love.
This painting is a ‘Dream Love Poem’. It shows Bella, the artist’s wife and the flowers she bought in a local market. And was painted in the spring of 1926, a time of great peace and happiness in Chagall’s life.
He and his family were staying in the small Mediterranean fishing village of Mourillon near Toulon. It was his first visit to the South of France. And he fell in love with its sunlit beauty.
His son-in-law Franz Meyer, in his major monograph based largely on his conversations with Chagall, describes this period; and why this painting reflects a particular moment of joy and freedom in Chagall’s life.
The liberty and success he found in France, the sense of his own powers, and the discovery of a joy-giving world of light and color, lent his life a vital elation that makes him say today ‘That was the happiest time of my life.'
Chagall was overwhelmed by the brightness of the sea. The Mediterranean affected him as a triumphal song of color in the vast, luminous space. He was also thrilled by the bunches of flowers Bella brought home from market day after day. Their dense, pure, bright colors served him as a link with the landscape. In many of his pictures a bouquet is silhouetted against the sea on a chair, a small table, or the windowsill. Delicate panicles, campanulas, and the great white calyces of arum lilies stand out against the thick foliage, bearers of light that also reflect the brightness of the distance. In these pictures, the sea itself is indicated by a few sparse motifs – bits of nearby coastline, a distant promontory, sailboats.
In one picture, Bella is sitting on a terrace overlooking the sea; in another (this painting) she is lying on the beach in the posture of the girl with the fan.’
See: Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, London 1963. P.348, 530.
This painting with its marvellous exuberance and joy, its richness and luminosity, seems perfectly to reflect these sentiments.
The painting has remained, until its recent acquisition, in the same private collection since 1935.
The flowers, with their wreathing movement, passionate exuberance and eroticism, are in a very real sense also human. Their richness of colour and texture – the paint in part heavily impastoed – contrasts wonderfully with the watercolour-like transparency of the thinly painted luminous sea and sky, to evoke a dream-like vision.
This is the only painting reproduced in Franz Meyer’s book, which shows flowers ‘seated’ on a chair. And given Chagall’s visionary poetic imagination, there is good reason to believe that he has quite consciously portrayed his very being – at that particular and gloriously happy moment in his life – in these flowers, as they soar ‘intoxicated with joy’ upwards and towards the loving, waiting Bella.
And steeped in the Bible since early childhood, has Chagall not also expressed a profound link – perhaps subconscious – with The Burning Bush and its personification of human thought.
Fifty years later, he was to write:
Ever since my earliest youth, I have been fascinated by the Bible. I have always believed, as I still believe, that it is the greatest source of poetry of all time. Ever since then, I have sought its reflection in life and Art. The Bible is like an echo of nature, and this is the secret I have endeavoured to transmit.
During the course of my life and to the best of my ability, and in spite of the fact that I sometimes feel I am quite another being, that I was born, so to speak, between earth and sky, that the world is a great desert through which my soul wanders like a flaming torch, I have created these pictures in unison with this youthful dream.
Are not painting and color always inspired by Love?
Surely painting is merely a reflection of the inner self and thus transcends mere brushwork which becomes irrelevant. One’s character and message are contained in color and line.
Since all life tends inevitably towards its end, each of us should try to color his own with the colors of love and hope. For myself, perfection in Art, as in life, is rooted in the Bible. When this spirit is lacking, merely mechanical factors of logic and construction, whether in Art or life, will never bear fruit.
In Art, as in life, everything is possible, so long as it is based on Love.
Exhibitions
Basel, Kunsthalle, Marc Chagall, 1933
Marc Chagall, Grand Palais, Paris, March – June 2003 [No.104]
The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, July – October 2003 [No.77]
Publications
Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, London, 1963, No.396, illustrated.
Exhibition catalogue Chagall, Connu et Inconnu, Grand-Palais, Paris, 2003,
illustrated full page[209].
Exhibition catalogue Chagall, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, 2003,
illustrated full page [153].