“Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up or on man’s hope in love. In life, just as on the artist’s palette, there is but one single colour that gives meaning to life and art – the colour of love”.
Painted in 1980, Paysage violet is a wonderful example of the peace and happiness that defined Marc Chagall’s later working years. Two lovers, entwined in one another's embrace, command the right side of the painting. Allowing the couple to dominate this section of the work, Chagall encourages the viewer to focus on the intensity of their relationship. With their eyes locked and their bodies inseparable from one another, the couple becomes a celebration of the nature of love and companionship. Pairs of lovers are featured throughout Chagall’s œuvre and are believed to be a commemoration of the love Chagall had for his first wife, Bella, who, despite having passed away in 1944, remained an inspiration for the artist throughout the rest of his life. Chagall often depicted his couples floating, as if their shared joy defied gravity itself. Indeed, the couple in the present work seems to float above the violet landscape, with a sense of perspective established by the outline of a small horse beneath the woman’s feet, suggesting that the couple are elevated.
The inclusion of a large bouquet to the left of the painting prompts curiosity because, like the couple, it is a visual motif explored frequently by the artist. Flowers have long been a symbol of beauty and romance as well as a reminder of the fragility and fleeting nature of life. This latter point is reminiscent of the Dutch Golden Age when artists often explored the concept of memento mori through the rendering of certain symbols, including bouquets. While the Dutch Old Masters preoccupied themselves with depicting the flowers realistically, Chagall, with this work, has painted them in his own dreamlike, whimsical manner.
A deeper reading of the visual motif of flowers is encouraged by an early statement by the artist who, in 1932, declared: “Flowers? I can’t watch them die and I put them into my canvases and so they live a little longer”’ (E. Pacoud-Rème in Chagall entre guerre et paix (exhibition catalogue), Musée de Luxembourg, Paris, 2013, p. 88, translated from French). Painting the flowers, Chagall wishes to immortalise them, preserving them from the inevitability of death. Furthermore, placing his depiction of the bouquet alongside the couple, Chagall could be alluding to his eternal love for his first wife and muse, Bella.