Galerie Maeght, Paris

Acquired from the above

Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Hommage à Marc Chagall, Oeuvres de 1947-1967, 1967, no. 63

Excellent condition. Original canvas and under ultra violet light there is no sign of inpainting. The colors are vibrant and pigments are stable. There is one small area of spider craquelure in the center-right part of the yellow pigment comprising the sun.
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Ever since his childhood, when he had seen the acrobats in the streets of the Russian town of Vitebsk wh🃏ere he lived with his family, Chagall was fascinated by the theme of the circus, and often returned to this subject-matter in his oeuvre.  The arrival of the circus signified the sudden invasion of the wondrous into the rhythm of everyday life, the transformation of the humdrum into a form of art that left behind a lingering sensation of happiness and amazement.  For Chagall, this had an allegorical connection with his own art and its performance, for he could never feel himself to be a painter alone but also a 𝔉magician, actor and clown.

The central figure dominating the present picture is a pair of lovers -- a reference to the love of his youth and deceased wife Bella -- floating in a dreamscape about  the ring of the circus.   In his most imaginative paintings, Chagall consistently drew from a vocabulary of personal symbolism.  We see several of these stock characters in this work, including the musicians, the acrobat and the cock.  But it is the lovers who command center stage in this picture.  Love and marriage were an important part of Chagall's life, as well as a recurring theme in his painting. His first great love, Be🦄lla Rosenfeld, was also from the artist's native Vitebsk, and remained a powerful symbol of his homeland, while his second wife, Vava Brodsky, was always associated for Chagall with France, where he lived at the time and where the two met. These highly personal and romantic symbols of his life both in Russia and in France are harmoniously and joyously combined in the present composition.