Estate of the artist
Sale: Galerie Kornfeld, Bern, June 15, 2007, lot 13
Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired at the above sale)

Osaka, Takashimaya Art Gallery; Kyoto, Takashimaya Art Gallery; Yokohama, Takashimaya Art Gallery; Tokyo, Takashimaya Art Gallery; Okayama, Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art & Gifu, Museum of Fine Arts, Marc Chagall, La Réminiscence de l’amour, 2012, no. 50, illustrated in color in the catalogue

The canvas is unlined. The surface is clean, bright and fresh with a rich impasto. Under UV, some original pigments fluoresce, but no inpainting is apparent. This work is in excellent condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Brides and grooms repeatedly appear in Chagall’s art throughout the span of his eighty-year career. Seemingly enchanted by the symbolic interlocking of two souls in matrimony, the artist’s happy marriage to his childhood sweetheart Bella, ending only with her death in 1944, compounded his fascination with the subject. The presence of a bride in a white gown in the present 1967 composition is a poignant evocation of his happy relationship in a powerful composition which succeeds as a touching ode to young love.

The couple hover beneath familiar elements of Chagall’s visual vocabulary: a floating acrobat, a green donkey and a candelabra. The deep, cavernous-blue of the background is enlivened by the rich splashes of purple, green, yellow, white and red. The symbol of the green donkey appears in Chagall’s 1911 composition L’Ane vert in the collection of the Tate Modern, London, also set against a deep blue background. The style of L’Ane vert is naïve but the imagery coheres neatly with the artist&rsquo💎ꦛ;s subsequent preoccupation with his Russian heritage and Jewish ancestry as two peasants take charge of their pack animal. The candelabra further heightens the artist’s nostalgic allusion to his Jewish hometown.

The present work seems bittersweet. The artist’s repetition of specific symbols has long illustrated the particular world of his vivid imagination, but in the present work also evokes a sense of personal melancholy and longing. Chagall once wrote to an old friend, Daniel Charny in New York, just after his seventieth birthday: “Life is always beautiful even though it is sad: good people and some close to us leave us” (quoted in Jackie Wullschlager, Chagall, Love and Exile, London, 2008, p. 488). Les Mariés à l’âne vert beautifully encapsulates the🧜 artist’s heartfelt appreciation of life with all its mixed🌃 blessings.