MARC CHAGALL | L'âne et le chien (Fables de La Fontaine)

Josse Bernheim-Jeune, Paris
Michel Dauberville, Paris
Thence by descent to the present owner

Paris, Galerie Berheim-Jeune, Chagall, 1930
Céret, Musée d'Art Moderne de Céret, Marc Chagall, Les Fables de La Fontaine, 1995-96, illustrated in the catalogue p. 97
Paris, Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Chagall connu et inconnu, 2003, no. 91, illustrated in the catalogue p. 196
Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Musée départemental Matisse, Chagall et Tériade: l'empreinte d'un peintre, 2006-07, pl. 86, illustrated in the catalogue p. 129

Walter Erben, Marc Chagall: Der Maler mit den Engelsflugeln, Prestel-Verlag, Munich, 1957, no 29, illustrated p. 189
Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, Paris, 1964, no. 445, illustrated n.p.

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Ambroise Vollard embarked upon the vast project of illustrating La Fontaine's Fables in 1920. He decided to call upon Marc Chagall for the task, a "painter endowed with a creative and fertile imagination of colourful inventions" (Ambroise Vollard, 'De la Fontaine à Chagall', L'Intransigeant, January 8 1929), whose art particularly pleased him and seemed "adapted to that of La Fontaine, both dense and subtle, realistic and fantastical". From March 1926 and over the following 19 months, Chagall made 120 gouaches around this theme, including 100 which were exhibited at the Bernheim-Jeune Galerie in 1930 (La Fontaine par Chagall : 100 Fables). Chagall had signed a contract with Bernheim-Jeune and Georges Bernheim in 1928, which lasted only until 1929 but still allowed Bernheim-Jeune to buy most of these gouaches from Vollard.

This commission coincided with Chagall's return to France two years earlier, and was an occasion for the painter to tackle a monumental figure of French literature. As Pierre Courthion recounts (in "Chagall et les Fables", Cahiers d'Art, 1929), in order to make his works, Chagall made Bella read the fables whilst his hand roamed across the paper, whilst frequently contesting the story's moral ending.

Vollard's decision to ask a Russian artist to illustrate such an iconic work of French culture provoked a number of disapproving comments even within the National Assembly. Yet, the criticism quickly faded in face of the exceptional quality and poetry of this group and the works were a great success when shown first at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, and then, for many of them, at the Galerie du Centaure in Brussles and the Flechteim gallery in Berlin. To quote Jacques Guenne: "In font of this series of gouaches, none of which resembles the other, neither in colour, nor inspiration, one desperately searches for what one should admire the most, a splendid flow combining fuming reds, opaque blacks, acidic greens, opulent yellows, luminous mauves, the prodigious alchemy revealed by an examination of the slightest textured surface of these images, or the fabulous invention and touching kindness of this spirit. It is perhaps important to reveal this miracle which makes Chagall's colour his inspiration's state of grace." (Jacques Guenne, L'Art vivant, December 15, 1927).

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