CHAGALL

UNPUBLISHED
DRAWINGS

'k

/
i=^
THE TASTE OF OUR TIME

MONOGRAPHS
FRA ANGELICO - BOSCH - EL GRECO
PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA - BOTTICELLI
GIOTTO - CARPACCIO - BRUEGEL - GOYA
VELAZQUEZ - REMBRANDT - MANET
DEGAS - CEZANNE - RENOIR - GAUGUIN
LAUTREC - VAN GOGH - KOUAULT
MONET - MODIGLIANI - MATISSE - DUFY
PICASSO - CHAGALL - KLEE - BRAQUE
Lic;ER - MIr6 - CHARDIN - KANDINSKY
BONNARD - DURER - COROT - VERMEER
FRAGONARD - INGRES - HALS
Forthcoming
POUSSIN

THE GREAT ART REVOLUTIONS

ROMANTICISM
IMPRESSIONISM (2 VOLUMES)
CUBISM - FAUVISM - SURREALISM

Forthcoming
COL'RBET AND REALISM

FAMOUS PLACES
AS SEEN BY GREAT PAINTERS
MONTMARTRE - VENICE
PARIS IN THE PAST
PARIS IN OUR TIME

Drawing on the cover:

Self-Portrait, about 1950. Ink.

DiHribyUd in the UniUd StaUs by

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
3131 WEST IIOTH STREET
CLBVBLAND, OHIO 44IO2

:.
rE"
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cKo
h
THE TASTE OF OUR TIME
Collection planned and directed by

ALBERT SKIRA
GHlOaL
Unpublished Drawings

Text by
Jacques Lassaigne
 N DUBUG LIBRARY
Title page: The Dream, 1964. Pen and ink.

© 1968 by Editions d'Art Alben Skira, Geneva

Librar)' of Congress Catalog Card Number; 68-51877
All reproduction rights reserved by A.D.A.G.P.,
Association pour la Defense des Arts graphiques et plastiques, Paris

Distributed in the United States by

THE WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY
22JI \X'est 1 10th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44102
 s

This book opens a door on ChagaW s private world.

None of these drawings have ever been exhibited or
reproduced^ with the exception of two which were included
among the small reference photos in Fran^ Meyer'
recent book on Chagall. The artist has always kept
them by him in his studio portfolios., either because in

his eyes they have too personal or too tentative a character.,

or because they are working sketches which he may want
to develop in the future. If Chagall has released them
now for publication., it is not for the sake of making

out a case of any kind., but rather as a friendly gesture,

the opening of a closer dialogue with the spectator.
Many of them are personal reminiscences of a wandering
life., drawn up almost at random from the well of
memory: they do not tell the whole story., but they
highlight it.

The drawings have been chosen for their intrinsic

,

quality., and for the insight they give into Chagall'

deeper responses, his way offacing the world, of meeting
people and events, of adjusting himself to these meetings.
His elliptical interpretations of things, sometimes devel-
oped, sometimes left undeveloped, are like the unstudied
gesture of the arm, suggesting, amplifying, protecting.
In this lies the peculiar value of such drawings, which
are apt to tell us more than the most finished painting
about an artist's language, outlook, approach, and
methods.
There are few artists whose drawings are so spon-
taneous, so buoyant and expansive. Drawing for Chagall
is not a virtuoso performance, as it is for an Ingres or
a Picasso. It is not a studied discipline requiring thorough
preparation. It is really the initial impulse, the rough
sketch feeling for its way, the sensibility in free flow.

Sometimes, too, it is a burst of anger, a voicing of dissent

or protest.
This sequence of drawings conforms to no precon-
ceived plan. It is not intended to justify any particular
line of research or to chart the course of a career. We
have preferred to let the drawings speak for themselves,
as they will most appealingly, if lingered over and
savored. If approached in this way, they will be found
to reveal unsuspected depths.
 Some represent the climax of a sustained ejfort, the
sudden disclosure of the main outlines of a large compo-
sition. Others toy with an idea that was never followed
up or grope toward forms which hang, it may he, on
the pitch and toss of chance, or whose secrets, anyhow,
are known only to Chagall himself. Even the titles

chosen to designate them here have given rise to some

discussion, in which the artist of course had the last say.
A. persistent problem has been that of dating. Most
of the drawings are unsigned and were originally undated.
The artist tried to date them later, often by a rough guess,
in an attempt to in review and set them in
pass them
order. The attempt was soon given up and the sheets
were again stored away in their portfolios. With
Chagall's help we have done our best to clear up a few
perplexing points and resolve some apparent contradic-
tions, and in the end the drawings practically grouped
themselves, falling into a sequence determined by their
underlying affinities.

A. word or two about the colors. Where they appear

at all they are hardly more than token colors. Yet what
a power of suggestion they have! A. dab is enough to
transfigure the plain outline of things, to create a new
proportion, a new space. ,
 The line has its own peculiarities. Precise and
minutely detailed when necessary., it usually remains
indeterminate. No need to finish a face if one side of it

is perfect. This perfection will do for the whole. Enough

that it be attained once. In every drawing the line is

new-minted and spontaneous., hesitant sometimes., then

pinpointing a detail with sudden sureness. Hence the
dominating impression these drawings give: that there
is nothing redundant or needless in them. Chagall abhors
virtuosity : in each of his drawings eloquence gets a knock
on the head.
He has always gone his own way., borne along by
his originality and resourcefulness. The various techniques
employed here are handled with a freedom and fantasy
that make each work unique. When struck by what he
sees., feels or remembers^ Chagall gives form to these
things with a touch and a vision as fresh today as when
he first made his name. He is as troubled as ever by the
evanescence of things., by the uncertainties of the morrow.
He has no idea of dominating a model or of scru-
object.,

tini:(ing it with an inquisitorial eye., of wrenching or

straining it. He looks on it benignly; if it fails to yield
the poetry and pleasure he expects^ and usually finds.,
then he waits and dreams.
 The importance of Chagall's drawings was very
soon recognised by his friends and by the first critics and
poets who were attracted to his work. The great Russian
critic Efross analysed them with insight and Blaise Cen-
drars took a keen interest in them. In 1920 Philippe
Soupault illustrated one of his first hooks of poems.,
La Rose des Vents, with drawings which Chagall had
left in his Paris studio in 1914. This was the beginning
of a long collaboration between Chagall and the poets.,
many of whose books he illustrated., first with drawings.,
then with engravings.
After Chagall's return to the West from Russia in
1922., the magai^ine Les Feuilles libres edited by

Marcel Raval, which often commissioned sets of illus-

trations from contemporary artists, twice featured work
by Chagall, in 1922 and 1924 (Nos. 2j and jy).
Actually, in this instance, illustration is not quite the
right word. What we find are drawings in Juxtaposition
with texts with which they have no connection, though
both maintain an equally high level of quality. But the
editor knew what he was doing : what he wanted was to
create a running sequence of pictures within a presenta-
tion of miscellaneous texts, very much in the spirit of
the simultaneisme of that period, a term invented by
 s:

Robert Delaunay^ who also contributed to Les Feuilles

libres. In No. 2/ a text bj Cendrars, Moganni Nameh,

is "illustrated'' with eleven drawings by Chagall. To

No. jy (September and October 1924) Chagall contri-

buted some important drawings of i^iy and several
Dead Souls, which
preparatory drawings for Gogol's
he had just begun to illustrate for Ambroise Vollard.
In this same issue there was an article by Philippe
Soupault devoted in large part to Chagall's drawings
" His drawing is that
of a highly- strung person., a kind
of flame running over the paper., invincible and altering
according to the complexion of his mind. I like to
. .

think at the same time of Paul Eluard and Marc

Chagall. In both I find what I like best in my fellow
men: sincere enthusiasm and an unusual sensitivity."
After quoting the poem L'Habitude (from Eluard'
Mourir de ne pas mourir),
Tous mes animaux sont obligatoires,
lis ont des pieds de meuhle
Et des mains de Jenetre.
Le vent se deforce
II lui faut un habit sur mesure,
Demesure.
V^oild pourquoi

fe dis la verite sans la dire. . .

10
Soupault wrote: " Chagall too has a way of divining and
expressing the dreams of men who under their alpaca
coats have wings.''''

In his autobiographj. Ma Vie, published in i^jo

but written long before and often revised, Chagall repro-
duced some very early drawings dating from his youth
in Vitebsk. The illustrations are few, yet they give the
book an ineffaceable accent. The fact is that the text
reproduced in his remarkable handwriting is itself like
a sequence of drawings, indissolubly linked to a graphic
expression which commands the reader's attention.
Since then, the major books devoted to Chagall have
usually included a number of his drawings among their
illustrations. Such is the case in particular with Lionello
Venturi's study of Chagall (New York 1944) and
also that of Fran^ Meyer (New York and London
i^ 64) ; the latter made a point of reproducing, among a
number of documents of biographical interest, the pre-
paratory drawings of the painter's major large-scale
compositions.
This little book is intended to throw further light
on this interesting side of ChagalTs work, which so far
has remained too much in the background and deserves
.

to be better known.

11
tntcuL
Unpublished Drawings
 1
1 is fitting that this book should begin with a picture of
the artist's mother. She was the first to understand the
unexpected vocation of her son Marc. It was a vocation
absolutely foreign to the environment of his childhood
and youth in the ghetto of Vitebsk. But she encouraged
him and, though they were poor, helped him to make a
start. Chagall has often portrayed this sensitive and spirited
woman on whom the well-being of the whole family depend-
ed. This portrait is one of the simplest and most beautiful.
Chagall had mastered his medium and was able to give
plastic form to the expression of his emotion. He enclosed
the essential of these venerated features in a strong sooth-
ing outline. The face assumes its full plenitude, like that
of a protecting goddess.
The following sheet, an evocation of atmosphere, illus-

trates the provocative attitude of the Czarist police in the

poor Jewish district of Vitebsk. Though the figures are well
spaced out, they hold together like the notes on a stave.
Each one is succinctly individualized. Chagall took up
these figures later and used them in his autobiography
My Life (to illustrate the episode of the old man with a long
beard who comes to the door begging and is invited into
the house).

14
 "t^HiiUi

The Artist's Mother. 1909-1910. Pencil. 15

 WK*<-
Sik
16 Policemen and Poor People. 1908. Ink.
\ A /hat a contrast between these pictures of the people
the young Chagall saw around him and the first

works inspired by the few classical models he had seen

so far. The delicate sketch on the next page —suggested
no doubt by some Italian Mannerist picture (Bronzino?)
which he had come across in a book of reproductions
belonging to Bella —shows his concern to bring out the
purelyhuman sideof one of the traditional religious scenes
which inspired so many generations of artists. For Chagall
the Madonna was already an obsessive theme. But this
was because he found in it the sacred, religious character
which he saw in the face, hair and dark eyes of Bella.
In the harmonious and felicitous drawing of a man

reading to a reclining woman, as they clasp each other's

hand, there is already a masterly ease and plenitude, a
wholly successful effort of transposition and stylization.
Note the fretted edge of the woman's sleeve. Here is an
exquisite detail which adds a fanciful touch to a severe
and exacting composition.

17
 Chagall 3

18 Nativity. 1908. Inl<.

 Chagall 4

Friendship, 1909. Pencil. 19

 The watercolor Self-Portralt of 191 1 , like the famous paint-
ing of 1910, The Studio, represents the first lodgings
occupied by Chagall in Paris, at No. 18, Impasse du Maine,
near the studio of the sculptor Bourdelle.
He rented these comfortably furnished rooms from the
painter Ehrenburg (cousin of the writer llya Ehrenburg)
who, being obligud to return to Russia for a time, had left

in his studio a large number of pictures —and Chagall, too

poor to buy canvases in the quantity required, did not
hesitate to paint his own pictures on top of his friend's!
Some of the furnishings represented in The Studio re-

appear in this watercolor: the rattan armchair, the divan,

the easel, the rugs and the hangings. But instead of being

20
subjected, as in the painting, to distortions no doubt
inspired by Van Gogh, these elements are here calmly set
out in the corners ot the room. Only the drawing reveals
the meanders ot their flower patterns.

On the easel at the back stands the preliminary sketch

of one of the first large-scale paintings he made in Paris,

the one that Blaise Cendrars called A la Russia, aux ines

et aux autres (now in the Musee d'Art Moderne, Paris).
In the foreground, filling the picture space, looms the
uneasy figure of the artist, cupping his gaunt and anxious
face in his hand. His expression is pensive and quizzical:
it is that of a man who, instead of being concerned about
the past, is looking questioningly into the future.

21
22 Self-Portralt. 1911. Watercolor.

i
23
24
 c>hjnaaJHi

uJi^^Sd^
Vitebsk, 1911. Ink and Watercolor. 25
 Many of the works executed by Chagall after his arrival
in France in 1910 were evocations of his life in Russia;
he seenned to feel the need to surround himself with mem-
ories of that life as a kind of protective screen. The water-
color on the previous page is an exact recreation of the

poor street in Vitebsk where his father had a small shop

(at No. 29 St Pakof Street). This shopwas in the first house
on the where the artist's sister can be seen standing
left,

on the doorstep. The street broadens out in the foreground,

showing in detail the large cobblestones of the sidewalk
held in by posts and the gutter running down the middle
of the street. On the right is a row of low wooden houses

with triangular roofs. The street recedes into the back-

ground like the narrowing apex of a pyramid pressed down
under a mauve sky. This colored drawing has the freshness
of an undimmed memory.

26
"The first of the next two drawings is one of many nudes
drawn from life at the art academy he attended in the
Rue Campagne-Premiere in Paris, but Chagall went beyond
realism in the thick black outlines suggesting volume
and density. The second of these nudes is undoubtedly a
slightly later work and the procedure is reversed. The form,

instead of being knit together and full-bodied, seems to

issue from the void which appears through the fine hatch-
ings whose juxtaposition for the most part replaces the
line. The result is a thinning out and fining down of the

image, a curious distortion which, obtained without any

overemphasis, discreetly heralds a certain modernist
stylization.

27
 Nude. 1911. Ink Brush.
28
 Chagall 8

Dancer. 1912. Ink.

29
 This figure of a rabbi engrossed in prayer is one of the

first, perhaps the very first, of a long series. Traced

out in pencil on the ruled paper of a schoolboy's exercise
book, it IS heightened with a few patches of simple colors,
the yellow of the face, the red of the beard, the white of
the sacred linen. The patterning of the colors in itself

forms a delicate and expressive composition superimposed

on the drawing.

30
The Rabbi. Pencil and Watercolor. 31
 /^hagall left Paris and returned to Russia in the summer
^ of 1914, just before the outbreak of war. In this view
of Vitebsk he represents for once the bright side of his
native city, a cheerful glimpse of pink buildings whose
scalloped outline is set off by a yellow sky, with a tree or
two and a blue fence in the foreground —the graceful and
glorious faqade of its monuments and mansions in the
old, elegant part of town (where Bella lived). He looks
upon it now with a kindly eye, in a poetic light. Despite
the anxieties and uncertainties of the hour, one feels a
change for the better in his life, a mood of buoyant optimism.

32
 r-

33
Vitebsk. 1914. Pencil and Watercolor.
 Ink.
David Playing the Mandolin. 1914.
34
 n the drawings of this group Chagall recorded happy
I

' moments of hisprivatelife. Here he portrayed hisyounger

brother David (whose death shortly afterward left a lasting
scar on him) playing the mandolin on a couch beside the
reclining figure of one of his sisters. The two figures are
drawn from close at hand, with a mild and loving touch
that rounds off the angles.
In the small watercolor on the next page, as complete
and perfect as his large paintings, Chagall portrayed Bella,
who was then pregnant, bending over a book with lowered
eyelids, as if drowsing, or (who knows?) daydreaming with
half-closed eyes, pausing thoughtfully before writing.
Except for the cloud hanging on her dark hair, everything
about her suggests placid happiness and pleasant pros-
pects. A mysterious and compelling presence, she is sur-
rounded by the familiar objects of her everyday life, cup,
samovar, looking glass, which reappear inordinately magni-
fied in the Moscow paintings of this period but which here
are subdued and unobtrusive.

35
36
Bella Writing, 1915. Ink and Watercolor. 37
 This is an easily recognizable portraitof that Uncle Neuch
who played so large a part in Chagall's childhood. It

was he who took the boy with him out of town, on long
rambles into the country where he bought beasts for
slaughter from the peasants. The drawing is a sure and
summary synthesis from which every anecdotal detail is

banished, and in which the figure takes on its full force

of conviction, at once ironic and vigilant, enhanced by
the torsion of the broken lines and the contrast between
the light and the dark eye. Although it bears the date
1908-1909, this drawing was almost certainly made in 1914
after Chagall's return to Russia, for the inscription on the
lower left refers to the war.

38
The Artist's Uncle. Ink.
39
 A fter four years in Paris Chagall returned to Russia in

1914 and took up again the familiar themes of Jewish

life in Vitebsk. In the interval his experience of both life

and art had been deepened, hand had gained in skill

his
and resourcefulness. During his absence those themes
had lived in his private dreamw/orld. Now he had them
before his eyes again and handled them with a new and
joyful exuberance..

A good example is the pen and ink drawing of a family,

in which father, mother and son are represented as a
single block, with all their members interconnected. The
two figures of the parents, together with the background,
are treated in fine cross-hatchmgs, suggestive of engrav-
ing, although this was some years before Chagall made
his first attempts at etching. The bodies are solidly built

up in powerful blacks, particularly that of the oversize

naked child rising up in the center of the composition like

a flash of light.

40
"The next drawing nnarks a further step in tine same direc-
tion. The blacks have deepened and spread over large

tracts, and the composition is balanced by the contrast

of the white goat standing out against the black sky and
the black cock silhouetted against a patch of white. The
theme was doubtless suggested by two stories in verse
by the poet Nister, With the Cock and With the Little Goat,
which Chagall illustrated in 1916. These illustrations (the

original drawings are preserved in the Russian State

Museum in Leningrad) in fact constitute his first attempt
to work out a purely graphic style which is not merely
the transposition of a pictorial language but which reposes
on simplified relationships between compact elements
treated with acuteness.

41
 Chagall 14

The Family. 1914. Ink.

42
The White Goat. 1914. Indian Ink. 43
 "This astonishing figure of a man floating in nnid-air, with
his head on upside down, appears to be one of the first

to be drawn or painted in Russia which, outside the por-

trayals ot his family circle, revert to the imaginative, often
rapturous handling of the human figure which he had
inaugurated in Paris in the large paintings of 1911-1914,
with their disjointed, airborne bodies and that deliberate
reshuffling of their different parts which conveys so
mysterious a suggestive power.
This drawing and a number of others were made on the
ruled invoice forms which he found ready to hand in the
military office in St Petersburgwhere he was assigned to
duty after being mobilized. They are pen and ink drawings,
made with a firmness and assurance which prove them to
be the synthesis of his previous achievements. While
retaining the essentials of structure, he experiments with
new techniques. Form is elongated, projected or diluted
into a sprinkling of tiny but precise points. Line becomes
filigree work. The result is a new vitality and vibrancy.
Chagall made the most of such effects not only in these
drawings but in his later engravings. And other artists.

El Lissitzkyforexample,followedsuit. Writing of this period,

the Russian critic Efross rightly pointed out that it was
Chagall who introduced this technique of stippled drawing.

44
Man with a Dog. 1914-1915. Ink.
45
 During his stay in Russia (1914-1922) he worked in condi-
tions which varied a good deal. Occasionally he was
able to do some large-scale paintings, but most of the time
his resources in canvas and colors were so meager that
he had to be satisfied with drawing or sketching out his
projects. These works, though necessarily on a small scale,
are nevertheless fully developed. This strange face, for
example, consisting of two quite different parts: the cra-
nium is a little windows and roof, while
hoJse, with its

the face itself is whose rounded

a kind of cooking pot on
side appear the eyes, nose and mouth, together with a
carefully lettered inscription in Yiddish: "To those who
departed before their time." On the right, coming out of
the house, is the beginning of a funeral procession, a theme
already treated many times in the Vitebsk and Paris paint-

46
ings. The drawing produces the impression of an intense
but Lilliputianlife. In one of the windows a tiny figure

appears. Chagall meant this to signify the soul of the

person whose cofFin is being carted away.
In the next drawing irony and satire have it all their

own way, without reserve. In the center of the composition,

slightly aslant, is the little outhouse in the garden. The
seat hole and the overturned figure, with its trousers down,
tell their own story. On the right the farm animals are
huddled around their feed.
A barely legible inscription and some scattered stippling
create a cloud effect around these quite unequivocal
indications. The rich blacks of figure, house and animals
have an extraordinary velvetiness, enhanced by the
filigree touches all around them.

47
 /,«<^ A*i«^ ^

Time. 1919. Ir)k.

To Those lA'ho Departed before their
48
 ^Wrf' rir

«
' flu

The Yard. 1921. Ink. 49

 /'^agall's stay in Berlin (1922-1923) after leaving Russia
good was marked by his first experiments with the
for
techniques of engraving. The publisher Paul Cassirer, who
wanted to bring out an illustrated edition of the book of

personal recollections Chagall had written, put him in

touch with the engraver H. Struck. He now produced a

short series of scenes evoking his childhood and youth,
and these were published in an album of twenty etchings
under the title My Life. -Now too he made his first attempts
at lithography. With his extraordinary intuition, he saw at

once, delightedly, the advantages of this new technique.

The soft crayon slipping easily over the stone permits a
direct and rapid recording of things seen ; it also facilitates
a more effective synthesis of visual impressions and a
simplification of the subject.

50

)
^hagall has always had a way of combining one tech-
^-^ nique with another and thereby obtaining unexpected
effects. So now he took the lithographic crayon and with
this executed a series of drawings, some on fine sheets
of lithographic paper, some on heavier grades of paper,
which enabled him to get varying effects of density, subtler

scumblings and a freer play of textures. The themes, drawn

from his private repertory of Russian folklore and personal
memories, are very close to those which he conjured up
in his autobiography and those which reappear in such
rich variety in his illustrations for Gogol's Dead Souls.
Here they are still presented quite directly, almost plainly,

as the basic elements of future work. One feels that they

may become at any time the object of many variations,

that in fact they are a storehouse of strength on which he

can always draw.

51
52 Reclining Figure. 1922. Lithographic Crayon.
 Chagall 20

Man with a Bird. 1922. Lithographic Crayon.

53
 Man, 1922. Lithographic Crayon and Wash.
Head of an Old
54
Man with a Goat. 1922. Lithographic Crayon.
55
 "This drawing appears to be one of the first Chagall made
after his return to Paris in 1923. It shows the old syna-
gogue of Vitebsk with its massive and chaotic architecture,
its windows along the women's staircase,
stained-glass
the rainpipe at the edge of the roof, its various openings
of different sizes. As a child Chagall was hypnotized by

this building, to which he went so often with his father;

it still dominates his memories, its formless mass hardly

seems to be that of Si house at all, for it is represented here
in mid-winter, covered with snow, in which nimble children,
not so very different from those of Bruegel, are playing in

the yard. A linear pattern, precise but intermittent, light

and pure, emphasized by ink lines often duplicating the

pencil lines, encloses the empty spaces in a composition

of astonishing fullness.

56
The Vitebsk Synagogue, about 1923. Penal and Ink.
57
 Having been asked by Ivan and Claire Goll to illustrate

their poems, Chagall undertook for the French edition

of Claire Goll's Diary of a Horse (published in 1926 by
Editions Budry) a series of drawings centering on the horse,
a theme which soon became almost an obsession with
him. He began with an equine setting in the shape of a
merry-go-round, which he made the object of an engrav-
ing, but soon the animal was personalized and humanized,
humble and graceless but tender-eyed. Little by little its
silhouette shows through the fine hatchings and becomes
(on the next page) a mercurial arabesque combined in
an ascending movement with the lithe figure of a naked
female acrobat.
In a self-portrait with curly hair, made about the same
time, Chagall shows himself with a fraternal animal on
top of his head, like a poetic helmet, carrying with him, at
this turning point in his life, all the riches of his past.
The delicacy of the line is reminiscent here and there of
Modigliani, especially m the fine curves of the eyes.
More than leaves and branches, the tangle of curly hair is

the haunt of a restless imagination.

58
The Merry-go-round, 1925. Ink.
59
 Chagall 25

60 Woman and Horse, about 1926. Ink.

 Chagall 26

Self-Portrait, 1925. Ink.

61
 AV?

Enraptured, about 1925. Ink.

62
"This curious little drawing, which at first sight represents
a clown or a conjurer waving his arms, is in reality very

complex. From his boyhood Chagall was fascinated by the

circus and one of his earliest surviving drawings represents
afew shabby mountebanks he saw performing in the street
at Vitebsk. In Paris in 1913-1914 he painted a series of
acrobats with iooselyjointed bodies, and Philippe Soupauit,
in one of his first books of poems published in 1920, repro-

duced a pre-1914 drawing of Chagall's showing the vehe-

mently expressive profile of a clown, all in curlicues. The
drawing reproduced here reverts with much more light-
ness and finesse to these arabesques, in which the same
strokes render the costume and the gestures. The figure
is doubled or tripled; under the clown's hat is a rabbi's
cap; on its forehead is the prayer box and between its legs
the torah. No sacrilege is intended. The figure simply
represents the fusion of several characters, as in the Com-
media deli'Arte, though its posture here seems to be that
of a man in prayer. After some hesitation the title Chagall
finally chose for this drawings is: Extasie or "enraptured".

63
 t IS difficult to be sure about the dating of many of these
drawings. On the previous drawing, Enraptured, Chagall
(long after signing it) inscribed the date 1918. If this is

accepted, the theme may be taken as heralding certain

hybrid figures of the Jewish theater. But the much less
angular handling and the spiritedness of the line strongly

suggest a later dating, of about the same period as some

of the drawings which went to illustrate Coquiot's Suite

Provinciate (1927). . .

The drawing reproduced here shows a man floating in

mid-air, with the upper half of his head detached and
looking, with its long flowing hair, like that of a woman.
Severed or overturned heads are characteristic of several

famous paintings (To Russia, Tlie Poet, God. Anywiiere

Out of tlie World), and Chagall resorted to the same device
in 1929 in the drawing dedicated to Charlie Chaplin which

served as the frontispiece of Rene Schwob's book Une

Melodie silencieuse. That drawing and this one are closely
akin, with their deep blacks set off by delicate stippling.
Here the green feminine half of the face assumes a strange
mask-like fixity.

64
Floating Figure, about 1929. Ink and Watercolor. 65
 Vollard commissioned him to illustrate the Bible in 1930,

but from his childhood he knew and loved the Book

of Books and many echoes of it appear in his work. Now,
however, he undertook to visualize (it is Chagall's way not
to tell but to show) the episodes which had touched him
most deeply and which he felt concerned him personally:
Genesis, the story of David, the prophets and in particular
Elijah, for whom the door is left open and a place is set at
table duringthe Jewish Easter. Disregarding the traditional
iconography, he made his own approach to these themes,
first traveling to Palestine in 1931 to steep himself in the
lightand atmosphere of the Promised Land, then executing
a number of gouaches and sketches. Of these, thirty-two
were used to illustrate the poems of Lession Abraham
Walt (New York 1938).
The ascension of Elijah, reproduced on the next page,
belongs to the last part of the work; the copper plates had
only just been finished at the time of Vollard's death in

1939, and was not until 1952, when they were taken over
it

by the Haasen atelier, that pri nts were made from the plates.
So this drawing can probably be dated to about 1936. The
composition is handled with unusual breadth (many of

66
his plates for the Bible are centered on a single figure
and bring out the humanity of these legendary heroes).
Though it is snnall in size, there is a sovereign authority
in its restraint. Comparing it with the final etching (No. 89,
Vol. II), one notes some significant variations, and if the
etching is richer and more elaborate, the drawing retains

happier proportions; the billowing clouds, lightly sketched

in, are more mysterious, and there is a more telling contrast
between the majestic figure of Elijah and his forsaken
disciple Elisha left behind on the earth, crying "My father,
my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof"
(2 Kings ii. 12).

it is interesting to compare this drawing with another

religious subject, one of Christian inspiration this time:
a Deposition based on Titian's Entombment of 1525 in

the Louvre, to which he keeps closely, only adding a few

details suggestive of Jewish or Oriental costume. The line

is duplicated with strokes of reddish coloring which

express the drama taking place. The gripping rapidity of
the execution makes us overlook the conventional side of
the theme. a gouache of 1940, The Crucified Painter, a
In

picture on the same theme can be seen on the easel.

67
68 Elijah Ascending in a Chariot of Fire, about 1936.
 ,M^ d

• V » » » V S «. S S N. V V «- V V V V V V V V v^
S. S. l- V- i- V «v S. \ S,
'

V ^ V > <. \

The Deposition, 1939. Ink and Watercolor.

69
 A s the persecution of the Jews got under way in Hitler's

'^ Germany in the 1930's and war approached, Chagall

resorted instinctively to the symbols of Christian mysti-
cism and of Jewish mysticism, which he carried back to
their common source.
The theme of the Crucifixion appears in his work in 1938
with the large picture of the White Crucifixion; there-
after it became almost an obsessive presence. Laden
with untold sufferings and afflictions, the Jewish Christ
offers himself as a sacrifice for the redemption of all men.
Chagall thus introduces him into the composition of the
Fall of the Angel, of which he had made an initial version
in 1923 but which only took its final form in 1947. The
drawing reproduced on the following page repeats in its

general design a second version of 1933, but with an added

70
force and solidity. These qualities were to be accentuated
in the final version, the figure of the angel rising higher
in the sky and intensifying its dramatic spinning move-
ment, while the village at Christ's feet became more distinct
in the glare of a lurid lighting.
After the White Crucifixion and TtieMartyr (1940), Chagall
painted the Yellow Crucifixion in the United States in 1943.
The drawing reproduced here shows the evolution of the
theme through these three major works. The monumental
figure of Christ clad in the Jewish ritual linen, at first a
suffering human being, was transfigured inthefinal version
into a victorious image. The Holy Torah unfolding in the
sky remains serenely out of reach of the troubled world
below, the shipwreck on the left and the burning houses
on the right from which the Holy Family is fleeing.

71
72 The Fall of the Angel, about 1939. Ink.
 Chagall 32

Crucifixion, 1942. Pencil and Ink.

73
 After Bella's death in 1944, Chagall went through many
months of despair and doubt. His one resource was
his art. This enabled him to carry on, and he produced
several of his most intimate works, steeped in personal
memories. Then, with the sets he designed for the ballet

The Firebird he embarked on a cycle of magic evocations,

often inspired by Oriental legends, which culminated in
his illustrations for Tlie Thousand and One Nights. The
whole of his feterVork was now swept up in this movement
and his palette glowed with gemlike colors.
This watercolor gives the equivalence of that wealth of
color, but with a marvelous delicacy of tone, a deftness
of handling which isnotunworthy of the shimmering image
on the stage curtain he designed for the ballet on which
the Princess and the Firebird were shown soaring up with
a single elan.

74
Dancer, 1945. Water color. 75
76 Still Life, 1950. Ink.
/^hagall had taken refuge in the United States in 1941.

After the war he made two trips back to Paris and then
decided to stay in France. In 1948 he made his home at
Orgeval, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris.
Then in 1950 he moved to the Riviera, settling for good at
Vence. There he discovered a new atmosphere which was
henceforth to cast its spell over his life and work, a mild
and rejuvenating climate, a profusion of flowers, fruits and
palm trees, a pure sparkling light. He patiently explored
this new and several outstanding works still lifes,
world, —
blossoming trees, —
open windows reflect the deepening
pleasure and wonder with which he looked around him.
In the South he found a fresh source of youth and joy, a

haven where he could recruit his forces between the suc-

cessive large-scale works on which he now embarked.

77
 Resuming at Vence the steady course of a regular life

entirely devoted to his art, Chagall gathered together

his store of works and his store of mennories: these consti-
themes which he now enlarged on
tuted a repertory of
and developed, often carrying them to a monumental
grandeur ideally suited to wail decoration. (Thus came
into being the idea for the Foundation of the Biblical Mes-
sage.) He gradually extended his creative work to other

media besides pafnting: to tapestry, stained glass, cera-

mics, and at the same time, with a view to popularizing his

art, he produced a vast body of lithographs. Many familiar
themes reappear in these different sets of prints: street
musicians, whose bodies are sometimes turned into instru-
ments, evocations of village life, roofs by moonlight or
snow-covered streets (culminating in the painting of Red
Roofs in 1953), and Biblical figures musing or brooding,
charged with symbols.

78
The Ladder. 1950. Ink and Gouache.
79
 Cellist. 1950. Ink.
80
 Chagall 37

Street Musicians, about 1947. Ink and Gouache. 81

 Chagall 38

32 Jeremiah. 1954-1955. Pencil and Ink.

The Carpenter's Family. 1953. Pencil. Ink and Watercolor.
83
 ^hagall's creative imagination was in full flow and the
^^ scope of his work steadily widened. One of the most
extensive series of pictures of this period was built up
around the theme of Paris. There had been times in the
past when he seemed to be obsessed by the Eiffel Tower
or the Great Wheel. Now it was the fancied Paris of his
dreams that he drew and painted, though always with
direct allusions to the actual bridges, squares and build-
ings, combined witTi human figures in keeping with them.
The initial sketches date from 1946, during his first return
visit to Europe after the war, when in the course of long
strolls through the city he discovered a Paris still drab
and torpid, which had not yet regained its bustle and fever.
In 1952 he took up these sketches, developing and elaborat-
ing them. The result was a series of twenty-nine pictures
exhibited in 1954 at the Maeght Gallery, Paris. A mass of
drawings, sketches and variants mark the stages of the
work and chart the transformations to which he subjected
his themes.

84
 nn\r\r

^"^
Ouai de la Tournelle. Paris. 1953. Ink and Watercolor. 85
 Another world opened up before his eyes: that of ancient
mythology. He made two trips to Greece (in 1952 and
1954) to prepare his illustrations for Daphnis and Ch/oe;
and on this same theme he designed sets and costumes
for the ballet with music by Ravel. This world provided the
setting for a new concourse of hybrid creatures, a kind of

paradise regained. Then he reverted to the familiar themes

he loved, redeveloping them in a grandiose cycle: Bible
scenes, interpretations of music (ceiling of the Paris Opera),
images of the circus and of acrobats considered as a sym-
bol of the playful side of life. In these large compositions
he brought together crowds of figures, mingling actors
and audience and sweeping them up in a vast cosmic
movement.

^hagall remarried in 1952, and since then Valentine

^^ Brodsky has shared his day to day life, helping him to

find the most favorable conditions for his creative work,

participating in all his projects, surrounding him with her

love and faith. To her he has dedicated some of his hap-
piest, most intimate works, unfolding in a genial setting

of serene and smiling forms from which phantasms and

doubts have been banished.

86
Paradise. Ink. 87
 Actor and Cock. 1964. Ink and Wash.

I
Valentine with Doves. 1964. Pencil and Ink.
89
 Chagall 44

90
 _l

The Circus. 1967. Color Crayons. 91

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
 The Dream, 1964. Ink. (20 x25'/2") 3

The Artist's Mother, 1909-1910. Pencil. (6VjX6V/') ... 15

Policemen and Poor People, 1908. Ink. (Y'/jX 7") .... 16

Nativity, 1908. Ink. (5V,» 5") 18

Friendship, 1909. Pencil. (4'/, X 6") 19

Self-Portrait, 1911. Watercolor. (5V,x8") 22-23

Vitebsk, 1911 Inkand Watercolor. (5V.x8'/a") 24-25

Nude, 1911. Ink Brush. {IIV5X97;') 28

Dancer, 1912. Ink. (8'/4X 7") 29

The Rabbi. Pencil and Watercolor. (5VeX 4") 31

Vitebsk, 1914. Pericil &nd Watercolor. (8'/,x 127;') ... 33

The Artist's Brother David Playing the Mandolin, 1914. Ink.

(7V,x107,") 34

Bella Writing, 1915. Ink and Watercolor. (8V4XI2'/,") • 36-37

The Artist's Uncle. Ink. (7 X8V4") 39

The Family, 1914. Ink. (7V,x 5'//') 42

The White Goat, 1914. Indian Ink. (8V,x 67,") 43

Man w/ith a Dog, 1914-1915. Ink. (87, x 97/') 45

To Those Who Departed Before TheirTime, 1919. Ink. (8x6") 48

The Yard, 1921. Ink. (11 7, X 14") 49

Reclining Figure, 1922. Lithographic Crayon. (672x87,") 52

Man with a Bird, 1922. Lithographic Crayon. UV,x5'l"). 53

Head an Old Man, 1922. Lithographic Crayon and Wash.

of
(107, X 107/) 54

Man with a Goat, 1922. Lithographic Crayon. (77,x77j")- 55

The Vitebsk Synagogue, about 1923. Pencil and Ink.

(13'/,x10") 57

The Merry-go-round, 1925. Ink. (11 X 97,") 59

94
Woman and Horse, about 1926. Ink. (9'/, xS'//') 60

Self-Portrait, 1925. Ink. (972X67,") 61

Enraptured, about 1925. Ink. (674x5") 62

Floating Figure, about 1929. Ink and Watercolor.

(107,x77;') 65

Elijah Ascending in a Chariot of Fire, about 1936.

(1174x8'/;') 68

The Deposition, 1939. Ink and Watercolor. (874x107/') . 69

The Fall of the Angel, about 1939. Ink. (978x1272") . . . 72

Crucifixion, 1942. Pencil and Ink. (20x15") 73

Dancer, 1945. Watercolor. (11 X 97/') 75

Still Life, 1950. Ink. (26x20") 76

The Ladder, 1950. Ink and Gouache. (14x117/') .... 79

Cellist, 1950. Ink. (1672x127/') 80

Street Musicians, about 1947. Inkand Gouache. (4^/^x57/') 81

The Prophet Jeremiah, 1954-1955. Pencil and Ink.

(974x67/') 82

The Carpenter's Family, 1953. Pencil, Ink and Watercolor.

(878x774") 83

Ouai de la Tournelle, Paris, 1953. Ink and Watercolor.

(18'/4x23V4") 85

Paradise. Ink. (2574x197/') 87

Actor and Cock, 1964. Ink and Wash. (1274x87/') ... 88

The Artist's Wife Valentine with Doves, 1964. Pencil and
Ink. (24^4 x 1978") 89
The Circus, 1967. Color Crayons. (20x2878") 90-91

On the cover: Self-Portrait, about 1930. Ink. (1078x87/')

All the works reproduced in this book are owned by the artist.

95
 PUBLISHED JUNE 1 968

ILLUSTRATIONS
PRIISTED BY, IMPRIMERIES REUNIES, LAUSANNE

TEXT
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BINDING
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