MARC CHAGALL: DAVID AND THE LION
10th June - 9th July 2022

Marc Chagall was one of the most popular and distinctive artists of the 20th century. He was born in 1887 in western Belarus, then part of The Russian Empire, to a Hasidic Jewish family. At 23 he moved to Paris, unable to speak the language, but excited to learn about modern French art for the first time. He was greatly inspired by the colours and perspective in work he saw there, and said ‘I brought my subjects from Russia, but Paris has given them light’.

An early modernist, Chagall was associated with several major artistic styles including Cubism, Fauvism, and Jewish folk art. Art critic Robert Hughes referred to him as ‘the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century’. According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was ‘the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists.’ He was highly regarded by his contemporaries and Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, ‘When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is’.

This exhibition features work from several different series by Chagall, including The Fables of La Fontaine, The Bible Series and The Jerusalem Windows. Lithography formed a very important part of his artistic output and from 1922 onwards he produced more than 1100 lithographs.

Concerning lithography and what it meant to him Chagall said, ‘it seems to me that something would have been lacking for me if, in addition to colour, I had not, at one time in my life, worked at engraving and lithography …When I held in my hand a lithographic stone, or a copper plate, I believed I was touching a talisman.  It seemed to me that I could entrust them with all my joys, all my sorrows… Everything that has crossed my path, throughout the years: births, deaths, marriages, flowers, animals, birds, poor working people, my parents, lovers at night, the Prophets from the Bible, on the street, in my home, in the Temple, in the sky.  And, as I grow older, the tragedy of life that is inside us and all about us.’

La Fontaine’s Fables (1928-31)

Commissioned by Ambroise Vollard, Chagall began the illustrations for La Fontaine’s fables in 1926. Derived from his gouache paintings, the complete set of etchings was finished in 1930 and finally published in 1952. Chagall and his wife Bella moved to Paris and had their first period of financial stability from the commissioning of this series - prestigious and lucrative, the project earned Chagall nearly 200,000 francs.

Controversy surrounded Vollard’s decision in appointing a Russian-born artist to illustrate the iconic volume of Fontaine’s fables, held in esteem within French literature, but this did not faze the known champion of the avant-garde. Vollard was drawn to Chagall’s distinctive sense of fantasy and reality.

Chagall prepared the plates himself employing a drypoint technique. Initially he painted preparatory gouaches for translation to etching plates, but finding that even master printers could not match the gradations of colour he required, it was more than twenty years before they were issued. Considered one of the finest suites of text illustration of the 20th century, these original etchings are one of just 85 copies of the suite which were handpainted by the artist and signed in the plate.


Bible Series (1931-1956)

Chagall's sublime Bible series of etchings was almost 10 years in the making and comprises over 100 etchings. It was the third series by Chagall to be commissioned by the great publisher and art dealer Ambroise Vollard. Chagall’s Jewish identity informed his work throughout his life - he came from a religious family and studied Hebrew and Biblical history at school.

Embarking on the project during a time of economic uncertainty, Chagall travelled to Palestine in 1931 for inspiration and worked on the plates throughout the 1930s, even as anti-Semitic violence and the rise of the Nazis threatened its existence. In 1933 many of Chagall’s works were publicly burned. By January 1934, a major blow to the project came when Vollard suspended his financial support as he weathered the Depression, but Chagall continued regardless. The first 66 plates were completed by 1939, with the rest already begun; but after Vollard’s untimely death and the advent of WWII, the project was postponed.

It would not be taken up again until 1952, when Chagall returned to the unfinished plates. By 1956 the series was complete, and a new publisher was found in Tériade. The final 105 etchings, characterised by an exquisite interweaving of lines hatched, scratched, and scored, are thought to be Chagall’s greatest and most personal work as a printmaker. ‘If we had nothing of Chagall but his bible,’ wrote Meyer Schapiro, a writer and close friend, ‘he would be for us a great modern artist.’

The Jerusalem Windows (1962)

In 1959 Chagall was commissioned to design twelve stained glass windows for a new synagogue in Jerusalem.  He was keen that his designs for the windows be more widely disseminated and was closely involved with the production of the Jerusalem Windows lithographs based on his studies for the windows. The prints were created in collaboration with the world-famous fine art printers Mourlot Frères of Paris and some of them required between fifteen and twenty colours each, in some cases up to twenty runs through the hand-turned lithographer’s press. 

In her description of the Jerusalem Windows, and the window lithographs, Dr. Miriam Freund stated they were ‘Executed in brilliant reds, blues, yellows, and greens... and the iconography included animals, fish, flowers, and trees. Chagall does not attempt a literal illustration of the Bible text, but a transposition of it in symbols of remembrances of his early religious training … As his designs evolved, the specific symbolism of one section dissolved into sheer fantasy in another. Each person can bring his own poetic interpretation into the viewing of these radiant works.  One will discover that these are joyous windows in which deep reverence and impish humour are intermingled.’     

Chagall’s enthusiasm and insistence upon exacting standards of print reproduction is well captured by the publisher James Parton who wrote, ‘he worked with the artisans every step of the way, insisting on perfection. For example, he stood beside the lithographer, a master craftsman named Charles Sorlier, to watch the single sheets pass through the hand-fed stone press, one colour at a time … e.g., six blues, to catch every nuance of shading.  And Chagall threw out the whole first set: the yellow, he felt, was off a shade.’      

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