For Immediate Release Press Release New York New York | +1 212 606 7176 | Lauren Gioia | [email protected]| Dan Abernethy | [email protected]| Sotheby’s to Sell Rare Marc Chagall Sketchbook - Believed to Be the Last Intact Chagall Sketchbook in Private Hands And the Only One to Ever Appear at Auction - - Eighty Five Pages of Previously Unseen Chagall Drawings - NEW YORK, 16 May 2011 - A deeply personal sketchbook used by Marc Chagall for over twenty years will be one of the highlights of Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts sale in New York on 17 June 2011. The 85-page book contains unpublished drawings in a variety of media, providing a virtual catalogue of Chagall’s colorful and moving iconography. The sketchbook originally belong ed to the artist’s wife, Bella Chagall, who filled the first eight pages with her Yiddish translations of French poet ry. After her death in September 1944, Marc C hagall poured his griefinto the sketchbook through drawings and watercolors, many of which depict him with Bella. None of these images have ever been seen by the public before. The sketchbook, which is estimated to sell for $600/900,000*, will be shown at Sotheby’s Paris on 16 and 17 May before returning to New York for exhibition beginning 11 June.
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
This remarkably intact sketchbook was used by Marc Chagall from the 1940s to the 1960s, and includes a wide
variety of subjects central to his œuvre. The sketchbook abounds in portraits
of Bella and self-portraits of the artist. These include a very beautiful ink-and-
wash portrait of Bella in a patterned dress with a bowl of fruit. There are
two sensitive portrait heads in pencil, one with closed eyes, the other with
open eyes surrounded by dark circles; both drawings possibly depict Bella's
final illness. Chagall himself appears in several fine self-portraits, in one as a
brightly colored satyr with palette and brushes (pictured below left). In
another, he appears as a drinker, seated next to a bottle labeled with his own
initials. In perhaps the most moving of the self-portraits, the artist with a blue
head and hand on his heart is seated at his easel, contemplating a red
painting of himself and Bella (pictured left). The couple appear together in one drawing as artist and model,
elsewhere as an elongated bridal pair; in yet another drawing they float in the sky with a crescent moon, a chicken,
and a violin-playing donkey – some of the artist’s most iconic imagery.
The bountiful religious imagery in the sketchbook is both Jewish and Christian,
with a series of portraits of King David being the most notable. In one very fine
drawing, David, crowned and with his harp, and a fiddler in a peasant's cap flank a
cluster of village huts (pictured right). Sotheby’s recently sold a striking painting
of King David between the two towns close to the artist’s heart – his native Vitebskand Saint Paul-de-Vence – for $4.2 million. In another striking ink sketch, a
Crucifixion rises up behind a solemn Moses, who holds the tablets of the Ten
Commandments. In another drawing, an angel bearing a menorah flies across the
page.
The sketchbook is equally rich in other themes that recurred throughout
Chagall's long career. The artist's birthplace, Vitebsk, is a constant presence. In
one drawing, a rabbi holds a Torah labeled "Vitebsk" at the scroll's edge. In an
unusual and elegant red-and-black drawing, an elongated peasant woman
balances a sheaf of wheat on her head as she walks what appears to be a dog on
a leash. Peasants, the wooden huts and fences of the shtetl, cows and chickens
all make appearances. In a revealing image, a bass player, whose instrument