“Art seems to me a state of soul.”
Painted in 1924 after his return to Paris, Chagall’s Au-dessus de la ville epitomizes the mystical blend of wonder, romance and nostalgia which defines the artist’s greatest paintings. Inspired by the love of his life, Bella Rosenfeld, the present composition not only captures the affections of their nearly thirty-year marriage but also speaks to the artist’s identity amidst an era of international upheaval.
When Chagall and Bella first.mes t in 1909, they lived on opposite sides of the town’s Daugava River, she in a great stone house and he in a modest cottage shared with his parents and eight siblings. Chagall described his enchantment with Bella upon their initial meeting:
“Her silence is mine. Her eyes, mine. I feel she has known me always, my childhood, my present life, my future; as if she were watching over me, divining my innermost being, though this is the first t.mes I have seen her. I know this is she, my wife. Her pale coloring, her eyes. How big and round and black they are! They are my eyes, my soul.”
Bella was the youngest daughter of a wealthy Hasidic family. When she first encountered the seventeen-year-old Chagall, he was the penniless apprentice to Léon Bakst, a Russian-Jewish painter and set designer in the Diaghilev circle. Though her family frowned upon the new relationship, Bella later agreed to marry her love, foregoing the comforts and advantages of her upper-class upbringing. Their engagement would withstand the tests of t.mes and distance, as Bella studied literature in Moscow and Chagall pursued his artistic training in Paris.
Right: Fig. 2 Fernand Léger, La Noce, 1911-12. Centre Pompidou, Paris
Like many young artists of the early twentieth century, Chagall was drawn to Paris for its reputation as the intellectual and artistic nexus of the avant-garde. Not long after meeting Bella, Chagall left his homeland, arriving in the French capital in the summer of 1910. He soon settled at La Ruche, the beehive-shaped collects ion of apartment-ateliers which in the first part of the century housed an array of notable figures including Amedeo Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Constantin Brâncuși and Chaïm Soutine among others. Chagall’s t.mes at the Left Bank-establishment exposed him to a wide array of nascent artistic movements, including those of Cubism and Orphism, which would prove most pivotal in his development as a painter (see figs. 1-2). Though he would never fully associate with either discipline, Chagall’s works from this period were notably influenced by Cubism’s radical redefinition of space and Orphism’s daring employment of color (see fig. 3).
“Under his influence, metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting,”
During their years apart, Bella and Chagall frequently exchanged letters, and in 1914, Chagall returned to Vitebsk to rejoin his fiancée as well as attend his sister’s wedding. What was intended as a few-months’ stay, however, was quickly prolonged with the outbreak of war in Europe, and further complicated by the political unrest in Russia. Unable to return to France, Chagall and Bella began their lives together in Russia, wedding in July of 1915 and welcoming their first child, Ida the following year.
"Why do I always paint Vitebsk? [...] With these pictures I create my own reality for myself, I recreate my home."
It was during these early years of marital bliss that the motif of the couple in flight became firmly established in Chagall’s work. Among the earliest depictions of the floating lovers is found in the large-scale compositions such as La Promenade, L’Anniversaire and the circa 1914-18 version of Au-dessus de la ville (now in The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow). In these canvases, the couple defies gravity as they alternately hover and soar above their house and homeland. Echoing the subject of these works, Bella later described a dream-like vision of the artist whisking her away to sail high above Vitebsk together: “You throw yourself upon the canvas which trembles under your hand. You snatch the brushes and squeeze out the paint—red, blue, white, black. Suddenly you lift.mes off the ground and push with your foot as if you feel too cramped in the little room. You leap, stretch out at full length, and fly up to the ceiling. Your head is turned to me. I listen to the melody of your soft, deep voice. I can even hear the song in your eyes. And together we rise to the ceiling of the gaily decked room and fly away. We reach the window and want to pass through. Through the window, clouds and blue sky beckon us. The walls, hung with my colored shawls, flutter about us and make our heads swim. Fields of flowers, houses, roofs, churches, swim beneath us” (Bella Chagall translated in Ida Chagall, Lumières allumées, Paris, 1973, pp. 258-59).
“The soil which had nourished the roots of my art was Vitebsk, but my art needed Paris—like a tree needs water—otherwise it would have withered.”
Center: Fig. 5 Marc Chagall, L'anniversaire, 1915, oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Right: Fig. 6 Marc Chagall, La Promenade, circa 1918, oil on canvas, The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
In the present composition, the young Chagall and Bella float effortlessly above their shared hometown of Vitebsk, buoyed by their passions and alight with the glow of the newlywed. This version of Au-dessus de la ville was executed in Paris in 1924, shortly after the Chagalls relocated to France, at last fulfilling the plan set in motion nearly a decade earlier. Characteristic to his practice of reinventing early compositions, Chagall returned to the themes within the Tretyakov picture over the course of a decade in varying media and supports. As with his other Russian compositions (see figs. 4-6), which were either sold early in the artist's career or otherwise lost between his peregrinations, Au-dessus de la ville proved among the most.mes aningful of his canvases and and one which merited revisiting in a new context.
Chagall's 'Au-dessus de la ville' 1914-1924
The differences between the Tretyakov picture and the present exemplify the pictorial innovation and artistic growth the artist experienced over that pivotal decade (see figs. 7-8). In the earlier picture, the influence of the Cubism is still readily apparent in the geometricized forms of the figures and muted panes of color in the scenery. After his return to Paris, Chagall’s palette became brighter and more jubilant, infused with the enthusiasm Chagall felt for his new surroundings. At the same t.mes , his forms become softer; the sharp distinctions between colors in his Cubist-inspired oeuvre give way to the sort of subtle gradations of hue which would increasingly define his work as his career progressed. Despite the formal shifts, the two compositions are remarkably similar in subject matter; in each the pair of lovers still hover above Vitebsk, Bella clutched by Chagall and leading the way with her outstretched arm. The town below consists of many of the same buildings, from the array of residences in the mid-ground to the church in the distance, but absent in the present picture are the farm animals and crouching figure—attributes which symbolized the artist's childhood in the shtetl.
As Andrew Kagan comments of Chagall's return to Paris: “This was a period [the mid-to-late 1920s] of unrivaled happiness and contentment for Chagall. He and Bella were able to discover the joys of traveling throughout France, where the artist fell in love with the varied landscapes and the distinctive effects of light. These journeys yielded works with a brilliant new illumination and an unprecedented airiness (Andrew Kagan, Marc Chagall, New York, 1989, p. 53; see fig. 9). Among the related Au-dessus de la ville compositions, the present work is the only painting executed in Paris and stands as the culmination of years of pictorial exploration of the theme. The Au-dessus de la ville of 1924 presents an unparalleled richness of color and harmony, conveying a sense of resolution and optimism not readily apparent in the earlier Russian pictures.
“No work was ever so resolutely magical [as Chagall's]: its splendid prismatic colors sweep away and transfigure the torment of today and at the same t.mes preserve the age old spirit of ingenuity in expressing everything which proclaims the pleasure principle."
With the rise of industrialization, city skylines would prove an increasingly salient and oft portrayed subject, utilized by different artists throughout the decades to express sent.mes nts ranging from nostalgia to possibility, from isolation to power, chaos and control (see figs. 10-15).
Chagall and the Modern Cityscape
Au-dessus de la ville was acquired by Etta and Mark C. Steinberg from Katia Granoff, one of the leading dealers of Chagall's work, upon the couple's first postwar trip to Paris. The present work proved the first major acquistion for the Steinbergs, who would become leading collects ors and philanthropists in the St. Louis area in the subsequent years.
As Dr. Elizabeth C. Childs writes of the importance of Au-dessus de la ville: "This picture, a copy made by Chagall after his composition of 1914–18 (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow), engages in a quasi-Surrealist play on the worlds of the unconscious and the dream by depicting the artist and his wife floating effortlessly over the Russian town of Vitebsk. The work likely appealed to the Steinbergs for its exuberant color, its romantic theme, and its magical account of daily life in the Old World. Steinberg’s two ambitious decades of art collects ing began with this purchase, a choice from an artist already popular in the United States just after the war, thanks to the endorsements of such leading figures as the critic Harold Rosenberg, the gallerist Pierre Matisse, and a comprehensive Chagall exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1946" (Elizabeth C. Childs, "St. Louis and Arts Philanthropy at Midcentury—the Case of Etta. E. Steinberg," Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2015, p. 2, illustrated).
A resplendent ode to his greatest love, Au-dessus de la ville is one of the finest paintings executed during Chagall's Paris period and captures the key motifs of reverie, nostalgia and romance which would define the artist's work until his final days. The present work has been held in the same private collects ion for nearly forty years and comes to auction for the very first t.mes .
Sotheby's would like to thank the Estate of Werner Vowinckel for their help in the research and cataloguing of this work.
Please kindly note that the present work has been requested for the upcoming Exhibition: Marc Chagall to be held at the Albertina Museum, Vienna from September 27, 2024 to February 9, 2025 and the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf from March 15 to August 10, 2025.
