Marc Chagall

Silvia Luzatto Loeb, New York (acquired from the artist and sold: Parke Bernet, New York, January 17, 1945, lot 41)

James Burnham (acquired at the above sale)

Stephen Hahn, New York

Acquired from the above before 1974

Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1963, no. 663, illustrated

Very good condition. The gouache is well-preserved. The top, bottom and right edges of the sheet are deckled. The upper-right quadrant appears to be slightly darkened, but over all the composition is fresh and in very good condition.
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La femme et la bête was completed towards the end of Chagall’s second period in France, shortly before he was forced to flee to the United States, and is a striking embodiment of the style that marked his work from the 1930s. Franz Meyer notes a change in the mood of Chagall’s paintings from this period, "This artistic experience was bound up with that of the Southern nature, the landscape, light, and air of Provence and Italy… Chagall’s pictures once again overflow with material sensuousness… Rustic and rural motifs are present now as then, but the thatched roofs, the trees, the dark hills, the fields with the golden yellow haystacks, no longer represent a nature that manifests itself in savage orgy but are part of a scene that offers infinite scope for a happy life" (F. Meyer, op. cit., p. 421).

 

Meyer also noted the fairy-tale mood that pervades many of these works, "Chagall’s new fraternal relation to animals evoked memories of the themes of the Fables; but the essence of the motifs is modified by an unmistakeable, new, fairy-tale tone. This makes every picture seem bewitched despite its sensuous closeness. The fantastic motifs recall familiar things and modes of life in childish harmony with nature and the world. Fairy-tale traits are not uncommon in Chagall’s earlier works, but the fairy-tale mood was never so simple and plastically insistent" (ibid., pp. 422-424). In the present work Chagall combines both a suggestion of the fantastic with a rich connection to the natural world. The female figure is enveloped in a verdant cloud of green that connects her inescapably with the surrounding landscape whilst the tender and contemplative embrace of the figures provides a strong implication of narrative that lends itself to the possibilities of a fairy-tale interpretation. Chagall went on to explore a similar composition with his 1939 painting, Songe d’une nuit d’été which also takes a narrative form in its depiction of Shakespeare’s characters Titania and Bottom.