Defined by allegory and vibrant, symbolic color, Chagall’s oeuvre is replete with subjects from folklore and mythology. From his interpretations of La Fontaine’s fables to the Old Testament’s parables and the ancient world’s legends, Chagall’s work presents a recognizable cast of characters intertwined with deeply personal referents. Painted in 1969, Orphée is a triumphant embodiment of the Greek myth and one of the boldest paintings of his late body of work.

In 1952, the renowned publisher Tériade commissioned a suite of lithographs from Chagall illustrating the Greek novel Daphnis and Chloe. Written by the poet Longus in the second century, the love story unfolds on the island of Lesbos, where Tériade himself was from. That year, Chagall and his new wife Vava embarked upon a grand tour of Greece, visiting Athens, Delphia, Olympia and Poros and their environs as the artist sought to get a feel for the region and find inspiration for his series. He would return to the country again in 1954, continuing his observations of the environment and sketches in gouache. Captivated by the landscape and Archaic architecture, Chagall stood in awe of the country which he now appreciated as the cradle of Western civilization.

After years of tireless work and rumination, Chagall at last published Daphnis et Chloé in 1961, capturing the resplendent color and vibrancy of the story’s setting (see fig. 1). Though he’d returned to his life in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Chagall’s time in Greece continued to linger in his mind and influence his art. In 1964, the unveiling of his new frescoes on the ceiling of Paris’ Opéra Garnier revealed another vision of the same Grecian tale, this time in the context of Maurice Ravel’s ballet Daphnis et Chloé. An ode to Europe’s greatest composers, the fresco also featured among its honorees Christoph Willibald Gluck and his Orphée et Eurydice. Apparent between the green and red sections of the inner panel of Chagall’s work is the namesake Orpheus who is seen playing the lyre to a rapt audience (see fig. 2).

Chagall’s love of music and theater was not only evinced by the fresco and the myriad sets and costumes he designed over the years, but also in rhythmic, textural works like Orphée which capture a similar sense of lyricism in a tactile and dimensional realm. Reimagining the theme first begun in 1964, Chagall’s Orphée presents the mythological tale of Orpheus and Eurydice in stunning color and highlights the inherent musical subject matter. According to Greek myth, Orpheus was a heroic musician whose beautiful singing and lyre playing enticed even the trees and animals around him to dance. On his expedition with the Argonauts, Orpheus’ captivating music distracted the crew from the Sirens’ song which was known to lure sailors to their deaths. In the present work, the namesake can be seen at the right of the composition in blue as he plays his instrument. Just beyond him toward the shoreline are three women, likely the Sirens in the context of the legend. Across the colorful expanse of water is a large gathering of onlookers who stand frozen, entranced by his music.

Characteristic of Chagall’s late oeuvre, the scene in the present work is one of enchantment and celebration. After years spent grieving past loves and living in exile during the war, the artist had at last found a peaceful life in the south of France with his wife Vava—the joy of which burst through in his work. Interestingly, Chagall chose to focus on the more triumphant moments of the Greek myth in his depiction. As the story continues, Orpheus returned from his journey with the Argonauts and married Eurydice, who died shortly thereafter from a snakebite. He ventured into the land of the dead, eventually convincing Hades to free his love from the underworld on the condition that the pair would not look back. Overcome with joy at the sight of the sun in the land of the living, Orpheus turned back to look at Eurydice and lost her forever with a single glance.

Orpheus too would perish for his chosen alliances; Dionysus instructed his followers to tear the musician into pieces as punishment for following the rival god Apollo. Dismembered in the attack, Orpheus’ singing head drifted down the River Hebrus along with his lyre, soon to become an oracle on the isle of Lesbos. Through much of art history it is this scene of the lyre and head which became a recurrent motif, especially in the Symbolist works of Redon and Moreau (see fig. 3).

So influential was Chagall’s chosen subject matter that the myth inspired the name of the Orphism movement in the early 1910s. Coined by Apollinaire, the term related to the idea that painting should be like music. The central proponents of the movement were Robert and Sonia Delaunay, close friends of Chagall in his first years in Paris. While he would never fully embrace the theoretical basis of Orphism and its fundamental concept of simultaneity, Chagall was influenced by the work of his peers and the bold chromatic expression therein. His early works reveal Cubist- and Orphic-inspired planar arrangements which would later be subsumed by his primary investigation of color and its emotional resonance (see figs. 4 & 5).

A master of many mediums, Chagall devoted much of his later career to site-specific installations and commissions. After visiting his friends Evelyn and John Nef in Washington D.C. in 1968, the artist set about creating a mosaic for their garden (see fig. 6). Executed the following year on a grand scale, the mosaic transcribes Orpheus, the three women, sun and group of people seen in the present canvas and captures the essence of the present work in a paler and more subdued palette. The monumental work now belongs to the collection of the National Gallery of Art in D.C.

According to Chagall, this gulf between the people on the shore in both compositions alludes to his own life-altering experiences as an immigrant, first in France and later in the United States. During World War II, the Jewish artist was smuggled out of Nazi-occupied France by the International Rescue Committee and relocated to safety in New York. It would be years before the artist returned to his adopted home country.

Informed by his past travels, loves and tragedies, Chagall’s visual lexicon is recognizable throughout much of his late work. The folkloric imagery within Orphée recalls his youth in the small village of Vitebsk, while the musical quality of the work speaks the customs of its inhabitants and the artist's undying passion for the art form. Interwoven among the characters of Greek legend in the present canvas are Chagall's iconic motifs of the rooster and fish and the familiar floating figures in the ethereal, dreamlike space.

Painted at the height of late oeuvre, Orphée captures the lure of mythology and the beauty of the artist's personal iconography on an impressive scale. The present work was exhibited at the renowned Grand Palais and Louvre in Paris, as well as the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo and the Palazzo Pitti in Florence and stands as one of the finest examples of Chagall's late works seen on the market in decades.