Marc Chagall

Estate of the artist
Private Collection, Japan

This work is in very good condition. The pigments are bright and fresh. Executed on white wove paper, not laid down. The sheet is hinged to the mat at the upper corners. The edges are very slightly uneven. There is a waviness to the sheet which is inherent to the artistic process. Some media stains on verso. There is a small spot of surface pigment loss in the white pigment at upper right. Otherwise, fine.
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La Pêche miraculeuse is an image of great power and dynamism: Chagall has conjured up a majestic creature half-man and half-fish that dives into the ocean, followed by two winged figures and watched by a boat full of spectators on the horizon. The scene is bathed in the artist’s characteristic blue pigment, punctuated by delicate dabs of pink, green and red, jewel-like accents created by the reflecting rays of the beating sun that crowns the scene. Animals (whether goats, cows, cockerels or fish) are arguably the most iconic motifs within Chagall’s œuvre, and the anthropomorphic creatures—of which the central figure in the present work is an excellent example—nod to the folk stories he grew up with in his early life in Russia. As Werner Haftmann has written, “for Chagall the animal represents harmony and contentment with the cyclic destiny of nature; the innocent acceptance of being a part of nature’s great ensemble of living things” (Werner Haftmann, Chagall, New York, 1973, p. 136). In fact the fish occupies a particularly symbolic role in his work as, according to Chagall’s biographer Jacob Baal-Teshuva, its appearance in his imagery represents a homage to the artist's father, a herring merchant by trade.

In addition to its allusion to his father, the fish also symbolizes the depths of the human unconscious. As Franz Meyer explains: “The watery depths in which it [the fish] passes its life are, like the depths of the human soul, an alien region, and the fish symbolises powers remote from man's consciousness. Chagall's pictures express...the sensual experience, not as a limited drive but as a complete spiritual reality which must be restored to its place in the whole range of human experience and therefore seeks expression. The fish symbolises one elementary aspect of this process" (Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Life and Work, New York, 1963, p. 380).