Marc Chagall

Brewster Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above in 1980

Executed on cream colored laid paper. T-hinged to mount near upper corners on verso. Faint mat stain around extreme left, right and top edges. Edges of sheet are naturally uneven. Sheet is somewhat time darkened overall but colors are very bright and fresh. Work is in excellent condition.
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The present work, evoking the tenderness of home over the structured academicism of many still life paintings, invites the viewer to a country table that witnesses Chagall's French reiteration of the rural heritage of his boyhood.  Of the years leading up to 1950, Werner Haftmann writes, "Now [Chagall] was discovering the French countryside and the way people lived in it. Repeatedly he left Paris for the country places...He was making the landscape, light, and life of France intimately his own." The simple yet ecstatic joys of country life would figure prominently in Chagall's later oeuvre, marking the artist's resettlement on the Côte d'Azur. Even in the subdued tones of the humble country kitchen, Chagall's flowers, an increasingly important motif for the artist, shyly illuminate the picture plane and resonate with chromatic weight.  As colorful accent or premonition of the vernal surplus in paintings to come, the present flowers and basket of plump mushrooms rejoice in the effortlessly poetic harmony of a disencumbered lifestyle.

Chagall continued to seek inspiration from an abundance of personal imagery collected during his early life in Vitebsk and later years in Paris. Paintings of this period are characterized by the use of bold color  and heavy outlines that animate the scene and synthesize a reality experienced with one imagined.