The present work highlight's Chagall's characteristic combination of motifs along with his adept skill as a colorist. Depicting a violin lesson in progress with clearly romantic undertones, Chagall beckons memories of his past. A reminder of his childhood in Vitebsk, where the music of the violin accompanied the basic events of life—birth, marriage and death—the violinist carries an almost totemic power in Chagall’s work and remained central to his oeuvre throughout his lifetime (see fig. 1).

In the present work, the figures are surrounded by Chagall's beloved farm animals and are juxtaposed against two multi-textured bouquets of flowers that fill the center of the composition. Such bouquets captivated Chagall beginning in the late 1920s and continued to, as evidenced in the present work, throughout his career. 

Writing about the subject of flowers in Chagall’s work, Franz Meyer comments, "Many are simple still lifes with a bunch of red roses and white lilacs; in others, pairs of lovers and air-borne fiddlers gambol through space. The atmosphere encompasses and pervades the flowers like a magically light airy fluid, vibrant with their vitality" (Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, New York, 1963, p. 369). La Leçon de violin is a quintessential example of how Chagall allowed his imagination and his multicultural experience to govern the paintbrush, presenting the viewer with various whimsical and autobiographical motifs with roots spanning his entire career.