Marc Chagall’s Chariot au ciel vert is a rare and important example of the artist’s early work and marks a pivotal moment in his career. In 1910 the young artist left his hometown of Vitebsk for the first t.mes , travelling first to St. Petersburg and then arriving in Paris in the summer of that year. He later recalled this period of ferment and cultural interchange: “I came to Paris as though driven by destiny. Words that came from my heart flowed into my mouth. They almost suffocated me, I stammered. I came with thoughts and dreams such as one can only have when one is twenty.”

Within two days of his arrival in Paris, Chagall had visited the Salon des Indépendants where he saw the work of many contemporary French artists, including the Fauves and the Cubists. Paintings by Derain, Léger, Matisse and Picasso hung alongside the vibrant Orphist paintings of Delaunay, who was to become the mentor of Paul Klee, August Macke and Chagall himself. Very soon the artist had moved into lodgings in the legendary block of studios known as La Rûche on the rue Vaugirard in Montparnasse, a building famed for its lively bohemian atmosphere and its cosmopolitan inhabitants. Chagall lodged in the room next to Modigliani, and Soutine also lived in the building during Chagall’s t.mes there. This environment would have a profound effect on his style as he turned away from naturalistic representation to an increasingly poetic use of colour and motifs.

Chagall’s paintings from this period are often referred to as his ‘Russian recollects ions’ for whilst he increasingly embraced the Parisian style, he also drew on his childhood memories for his subject matter. The distinctive wooden buildings of Vitebsk, groups of peasants at work and play, elderly Rabbi and musicians populate these works, even as his approach to colour and form grew ever more fantastic. In the present work he takes as his subject the simple scene of a horse-drawn cart surrounded by figures; yet the stylised characters and the vivid green sky belie the exciting new direction his art would soon take. Indeed, in these works Chagall introduced many of the motifs and characters that would become recurring features of his art as can be seen in a number of compositions from these years which share a common or similar subject with Chariot au ciel vert (figs. 1 and 2).

As Jean-Michel Foray wrote about this early period, this combination of subject and form would quickly mark Chagall out among his contemporaries: "To put it another way, at the precise moment when the avant-garde was moving away from figuration, narrative compositions, and genre painting in favour of formalism and abstraction, Chagall reintroduced traditional themes and religious subject matter. This decision, though defining for Chagall, represented the beginning of a deep rift between the artist and the avant-garde" (Exh. Cat., San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Marc Chagall, 2003, p. 64). In some ways this rift would continue throughout his career, and although Chagall’s fantastical compositions would find some resonance in the work of the Surrealists, he would continue to pursue the unique artistic vision that first found voice in this early pivotal moment.