Marc Chagall

Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1961, no. 486, mentioned p. 355, illustrated n.p.

The present painting belongs to a body of nineteen gouaches executed in 1927 that came to be known as the Cirque Vollard on account of the works' subject matter and their ownership by the dealer Ambroise Vollard. They were inspired by Chagall's regular visits that year to the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris, where he used Vollard's box.  This period was one of immense contentment for Chagall, facilitated by economic success and social and familial security. The emancipated imagery of the Cirque Vollard suite, including that of this painting, perfectly implies Chagall's contemporaneous optimism and reminds us of Susan Compton's assertion that 'there have been few artists this century who have combined such a sensuous enjoyment of the act of painting' (S. Compton, Chagall (London, 1985), p.13).

This work delights in presenting the innately absurd image of a goat smoking a pipe, the subject's incongruity reminding the viewer of childlike graffiti. The clown-like figure at the right of the image with closed eye but raised hand and foot references the circus. Taken with the rural backdrop including trees and wooden house, this image can be read in terms of Chagall's associations of the circus with his Russian upbringing, a conflation he returned to time and again.