Marc Chagall

Galerie Chalette, New York

Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired in the 1950s)

Thence by descent to the present owners

In Deux têtes à la fenêtre Marc Chagall depicts an intimate embrace set against a sapphire blue night sky and a bouquet of flowers. Executed in 1955-56, it reflects the new sense of security and romance that Chagall found with Valentine 'Vava' Brodsky, his second wife whom he married in 1952. The beautifully restrained palette - limited primarily to the brilliant blue, deep purple and highlights of yellow and white - is typical of Chagall's depictions of lovers during the 1950s. The artist discussed the importance of love and art in a lecture in 1958: 'I have come to feel the relative righteousness of our ways, and the ridiculousness of anything that is not produced with one’s own blood, and one’s soul, and which is not saturated by love' (quoted in Jacob Baal-Teshuva (ed.), Chagall, A Retrospective, New York, 1995, p. 179).

In the present work, the window backdrop sets the stage for a nocturnal scene in which the lovers’ faces glow even brighter than the moon. Franz Meyer writes about the figures in Chagall’s window compositions: 'As in many older landscapes and especially window pictures, these figures serve not only as a spatial repoussoir but also as a contrast to "mere" nature, providing Chagall with the field of psychic tension that creates the actual, total sympathy embodied in the picture […]. The bodies of the lovers […] respond to the mystery of growth and blossoming that spans heaven and earth' (F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, London, 1964, p. 552). In the present work, the crescent moon and the bouquet of flowers, which symbolise heaven and earth, balance the composition from opposite corners. The sublime energy of the work converges on the embrace, a representation of eternal love conjured in Chagall’s unique artistic vision.