Marc CHAGALL (1887-1985) Lot n° 11

Les Mariés sous le baldaquin, 1966 Oil and gouache on canvas, signed lower right 16.25 x 10.5 in. 41 x 27 cm. This work is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity n° 2010023 issued by the Comité Marc Chagall, Paris. Provenance Atelier Marc Chagall, Saint-Paul Private Collection, Switzerland Exhibitions 2012, Japan; Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, Tokyo, Okayama, Gifu Les mariés sous le baldaquin, explores one of the Marc Chagall's central themes, marriage, reuniting some of the most characteristics elements of his art. Executed in 1966, the picture illustrates a wedding scene: enveloped by a dark blue night, a groom and a bride stand under a bright red canopy. Around them people and animals are celebrating: two musicians are playing music, while a donkey and a rooster have gathered around the scene participating in the group's happiness. Present in Les mariés sous le baldaquin are some of the most distinctive symbols of Chagall's art: the bride, the animals and the fiddler. Using trembling lines and dense color, Chagall managed to evoke a fleeting vision which recalls the vivid, momentary world of dreams. This work appears to recreate the atmosphere of a passage taken from the notebooks of Chagall's first wife Bella, in which she narrates a memory from her childhood, when she escaped one night to a reception room nearby to peer into a wedding ceremony: "[The groom] whose tall hat trembled with him. He drew near the whiteness of the bride. He seemed as scared of her and her of him...a little red sky has been unfurled in the middle of the dark floor held up with long poles. The bride stood like a bright cloud in the middle of the dark floor." (Quote in Chagall exh. Cat., Philadelphia, 1985, p.218). Enshrouding everything in dark blue in order to let the whiteness of the bride glowing in the night, with Les mariés sous le baldaquin Chagall seems to paid homage to his wife's memory: in the left corner, a small girl wonders into the scene holding a candlestick, evoking perh