Marc Chagall

Private Collection, Japan (acquired circa 1985)
Private Collection, Tokyo (acquired circa 2007)

The work is in excellent condition. Executed on white wove paper with deckled edges. The sheet is intermittently taped to the backing board along all four edges. The colors are fresh and vibrant.
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Performances of music, dance and the circus played an important role in Chagall's universe and provided an infinite source of inspiration for his painting.  The theme was of great significance to him as a poetic, visionary experience – a transcendental parallel to real life which indulged his imagination and propensity towards pure, lyrical escapism.  The joyous atmosphere and the sense of celebration inherent to this subject certainly appealed to the artist's colorful, life-affirming vision, and he translated this sense of energy and movement into bold, lively compositions such as Les Danseurs.

The present composition centers on a dancing couple, depicted amidst a ring of merrymakers rendered with variations in scale and disregard for rules of naturalism and perspective. Chagall's joy of creation and freedom of interpretation reflect his confidence in his style and technique and his deeply subjective approach to painting.  With its fanciful, dream-like composition, the painting becomes an expression of the artist's internal and highly individual interpretation, rather than an objective depiction of a couple on the dance floor. The idea of the image as a portrayal of the artist's own fantasy is underlined by the presence of two chickens in the melee, personal motifs which Chagall turned to throughout his career.

In his later images of dancers, Susan Compton notes, Chagall: "wields his brush, loaded with color, to create a shimmering background, ignoring conventions of shaping pictorial space: instead, he paints a magical, swirling composition of figures and colors which effectively matches the dance of life" (S. Compton in Chagall (exhibition catalogue), Royal Academy of Arts, London, and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 1985, p. 229).

Fig. 1 Marc and Bella Chagall in the artist's studio circa 1939. Ida Chagall Collection, Paris.