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拍品专文
Nostalgic memories of his first wife Bella Rosenfeld and their native Vitebsk flooded Marc Chagall in 1945, as he mourned her sudden and tragic death in the fall of 1944. Engulfed in an intense wave of grief, Chagall was unable to paint for several months. Discussing his despair following Bella’s passing, he wrote: “There was a loud thunderclap and brief cloudburst about six o’clock in the afternoon of September 2nd 1944, when Bella departed from this world… For me, all was darkness…” (quoted in F. Meyer, op. cit., 1964, p. 466). Chagall moved to his daughter's New York apartment shortly afterwards, where he apparently turned his canvases towards the wall, abandoning painting until the spring of the following year. “Direct observation gives way to memory" Franz Meyer observed of the paintings begun in 1945, after nine months of depressed inactivity (quoted in ibid, p. 470).
In Fin de journée ou Le Cheval rouge, Chagall reminisces over his past life using familiar motifs and symbols. The rooster depicted in bright tangerine tones at upper left and the small village house below it, as well as the red horse and still life of flowers to the right of the composition, are all memories from Chagall’s youth in Vitebsk, where he met Bella, tenderly evoked here in a maternal image of devotional care. The outline of an adolescent face, perhaps Chagall's own, peering over a fence and Bella's face bespeak a sentimental wistfulness for their shared youth, for what must have seemed the pastoral simplicity of their courtship, when Bella climbed in and out of windows to be with the artist.
Their experience of love was one of shared intensity that seemed not to falter or fade over nearly three decades of marriage, and Chagall's adoration for Bella grew still stronger in the years after her passing, crystallizing around her memory the sum of their eternal moments together. At the metaphoric "end of the day," which Fin de journée translates to in English, it was in remembrance of Bella, his muse, mother, and manager in one, that Chagall resumed painting, keeping her spirit, and with it the memories of Old Russia and their deeply romantic love, alive in his imagination. As such, the present lot stands as a deeply felt romantic tribute to Bella, to their life together, and to the place where their love first blossomed.
In Fin de journée ou Le Cheval rouge, Chagall reminisces over his past life using familiar motifs and symbols. The rooster depicted in bright tangerine tones at upper left and the small village house below it, as well as the red horse and still life of flowers to the right of the composition, are all memories from Chagall’s youth in Vitebsk, where he met Bella, tenderly evoked here in a maternal image of devotional care. The outline of an adolescent face, perhaps Chagall's own, peering over a fence and Bella's face bespeak a sentimental wistfulness for their shared youth, for what must have seemed the pastoral simplicity of their courtship, when Bella climbed in and out of windows to be with the artist.
Their experience of love was one of shared intensity that seemed not to falter or fade over nearly three decades of marriage, and Chagall's adoration for Bella grew still stronger in the years after her passing, crystallizing around her memory the sum of their eternal moments together. At the metaphoric "end of the day," which Fin de journée translates to in English, it was in remembrance of Bella, his muse, mother, and manager in one, that Chagall resumed painting, keeping her spirit, and with it the memories of Old Russia and their deeply romantic love, alive in his imagination. As such, the present lot stands as a deeply felt romantic tribute to Bella, to their life together, and to the place where their love first blossomed.