Lot 335 D

In 1930, following the illustrations of La Fontaine's fables, Ambroise Vollard commissioned Marc Chagall to carry out the project of an extensive series of illustrations of the “Bible”, that is, the Old Testament. This would in fact provide the initial impulse behind Chagall's artistic exploration of this material, and he succeeded in achieving a masterpiece of printmaking. The artist found inspiration during a journey to Egypt and Palestine in early 1931: “The experience of the landscape and light provided the initial impulse for the Biblical etchings in Paris, and in some sheets we very emphatically sense that the reported events took place in the 'Land of the Bible'. [...] That which forms the essence of the Bible's unity, namely, the people of Israel's being chosen by God and their consequent submission to God: these aspects are rendered visible by Chagall - beyond all of the individual Biblical depictions - in that light which helps to define every scene.” (Franz Meyer, Die Bibel, in: Marc Chagall, op. cit. p. 385). Chagall's work on the series of illustrations could no longer be completed during Vollard's lifetime; according to the artist's conception, the message of these images was to approach as vividly and closely as possible to the selected Biblical texts. It was not until 1952 to 1956, after some of the plates created between 1931 and 1939 had been newly reworked, that the edition was completed.
“Chagall's familiarity with the Bible goes back to his childhood. At that time he experienced the stories of the patriarchs, kings and prophets not as a chronicle of events that had occurred in the distant past, but like an account of a second world, which permanently lived on behind daily reality. [...] The history of the Jewish people is - in the midst of an alien historical space - always the one recorded by the Torah, and the Jewish festivals renew its events in every present. [...] 'It is solely for the Jewish people that these stories are the stories of their ancestors and the living reality which, whether the individual is aware of it or not, feeds into his own inner history.'” (Franz Meyer, with a quotation from Erich Neumann, in: Marc Chagall, op. cit., p. 383).