La branche de gui or Le rêve is a beautiful and tender evocation of some of the artist’s most iconic motifs, including his first wife Bella, his native Vitebsk and his beloved new homeland of France. Chagall gives a dream-like glimpse into his life, capturing a romantic scene between Bella and himself. Working in gouache, Chagall vividly applied bright and luminous colours to create an image that radiates warmth in both its hues and subject matter.
The great love of Chagall’s life was Bella Rosenfeld, like himself a native of Vitebsk, whom he married in 1915 and with whom he spent the next thirty years of his life. Chagall’s description of the first meeting with his future wife shows the profound connection he felt with her: ‘Her silence is mine. Her eyes, mine. I feel she has known me always, my childhood, my present life, my future; as if she were watching over me, divining my innermost being, though this is the first time I have seen her. I know this is she, my wife. Her pale coloring, her eyes. How big and round and black they are! They are my eyes, my soul’ (quoted in J. Baal-Teshuva, (ed.), Chagall, A Retrospective, New York, 1995, pp. 58-59). The artist’s affection for his wife is a recurring subject in Chagall’s œuvre and particularly poignant in present work, a serenade to Bella.
After their marriage, depictions of himself and Bella as a couple featured regularly in Chagall's work. Their most iconic depiction is in L’Anniversaire, now at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in which the artist captures Bella surprising him with flowers on the occasion of his birthday. It is the first time Chagall used the motif of the floating couple, a feature later repeated in many of his works. In La branche de gui or Le rêve, Chagall reinterprets the scene of L’Anniversaire, this time with only himself floating, and presenting Bella with a branch of mistletoe. A symbol of long life and health, it is indicative of the couple’s admiration and devotion to one another.
“Only love and uncalculating devotion towards others will lead to the greatest harmony in life. And this must, of course, be included in each utterance, in each brushstroke, and in each colour.”
Indeed, the 1920s were a particularly happy and peaceful time for the couple and their daughter Ida. Chagall had spent the years between 1910 and 1914 in Paris, arriving with, ‘a ripe colour gift, a fresh, unashamed response to sentiment, a feeling for simple poetry and a sense of humor’ (James J. Sweeney in Marc Chagall (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1946, n.p.). He fully immersed himself in the capital’s avant-garde and found inspiration in his new-found freedom. His return to Russia in 1914 to marry Bella coincided with the outbreak of the First World War and what ensued were years of uncertainty and upheaval. Chagall’s eventual return to France in 1923 with his wife and child marked the beginning of a period of stability as well as financial success.
Despite the happiness of his new life in France, Russia remained an important part of the artist’s life and he suffuses his works with references to his native country, creating an idyllic scene that combined the real with the imagined. In the present work, the landscape seen through the window is interspersed with elements recalling his home town of Vitebsk, such as the green and red wooden houses. The result is a verdant and bucolic scene that emphasises the happy union of the couple at the centre of this beguiling composition.
