MARC CHAGALL | Moïse avec les Tables de la Loi et l'artiste

Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne
Private Collection, Melbourne (acquired from the above in 1951)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Berne, Kunsthalle Bern, Marc Chagall, 1951, no. 107

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down and hinged to the mount at three places along the upper edge. The sheet is gently undulating due to the application of medium. There are artist's pinholes to the lower two corners. There is a flattened crease running across the lower left corner (measuring approx. 4cm.). There are areas of skinning to the artist's canvas visible in the background at the centre of the composition, possibly intended by the artist. There is a small repaired tear to the upper part of the left edge (measuring approx 0.5cm.) and to the lower centre of the left edge (measuring approx. 1cm.), there is a further repaired tear to the upper part of the right edge (measuring approx. 1cm.) There are remnants of previous tape in places along the verso. This work is in overall good condition.
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Growing up in Vitebsk, the poetic nature of Biblical narratives had surrounded Chagall since childhood. In 1930 he happily accepted commissions for painted scenes from the Old Testament from the art dealer and writer, Ambroise Vollard. Painted circa 1949-50, the present work echoes Chagall’s continued search for profound reflection in life and in art, which he especially revisited from the mid-1950s until 1966 through a series of large paintings, which comprised his Biblical Message. In the artist’s own words: ‘I was born, one might say, between heaven and earth, that the world is for me a great desert in which my soul wanders like a torch, I did these paintings in unison with this distant dream.’ (in ‘The Biblical Message’ in Chagall: A Retrospective (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1995, p. 295). While Chagall's paintings often incorporated religious iconography, he daringly re-appropriated these images for his own pictorial narratives, changing their significance and breathing new life into these age-old motifs. In Moïse tenant les Tables de la Loi, et l'artiste, Chagall interrogates the metaphysical potential of paint by intrinsically aligning the extraordinary with the mundane, the self-portrait with the profit. He consequently aligns his own artistic message with a biblical message, one that is infused with poetic and religious insight.  Chagall writes, ‘It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time. Ever since then, I have searched for its reflection in life and in Art. The Bible is like an echo of nature and this is the secret I have tried to convey’ (quoted in ‘The Biblical Message’, 1973, in Barbara Harshav (ed.), Marc Chagall on Art and Culture, Stanford, 2003, p. 172).



The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the Comité Chagall.