Marc Chagall

Estate of the artist
Private Collection, New Hampshire

En Été was painted in the final years of Chagall’s life when color in his works achieved its full radiance and plenitude. In the present work, a luminous blue is the dominant color, juxtaposed against bold strokes of deep crimson characteristic of the artist’s oeuvre. This red appears again in various spots throughout the composition, including the leaves of tree and the costume of the figure at the lower right. This remarkable use of color is particular to Chagall, often seen as one of the most brilliant colorists of the 20^th century. Susan Compton notes of these later works: “In many of these pictures Chagall's handling of paint is an important part of the work: the picture surface is as rewarding as the imagery” (Chagall, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1985, p. 223).

In En Été, Chagall worked over the surface of the painting, scraping and scratching with a brush end or other implement to create a rougher topography and a richer texture. To the very end of his days, Chagall continued painting his romantic reveries of love and joy in bold bursts of color. Compton also notes the following regarding the artist's final years in the south of France: “His eye did not dwell on details but on the concentration of light and matter, on the chemistry of nature for which he created an equivalent in his painting... Above all, the oils of this period convey the artist's sheer enjoyment of painting” (ibid.).

Fig. 1, The last photograph of Marc Chagall taken two years after he painted En Été, Courtesy of Cinquini, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 1985