The Bay

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MARC CHAGALL

Belorussian-born French, 1887 – 1985

The Bay (La Baie), 1962

Lithograph

Purchase

1973.017

Marc Chagall was born into a devout Jewish family in Belorussia (now Belarus). He studied painting in St. Petersburg and then Paris where, except for the period of World War II, he lived most of his life. Beyond painting on canvas, Chagall designed sets and costumes for the theater, created stained glass windows, and worked as a printmaker. Chagall’s oeuvre features a number of personal motifs, and the image of flying lovers is one of these. The woman figure in this lithograph most likely represents his third wife, Vava. Chagall’s naïve illustrative style and explosions of bright color establish a fantastical realm where the two lovers are both in their own world and immersed within nature. The print evokes Chagall’s belief that “Love and fantasy go hand in hand.”

Moss Davis ‘21

Learn More about Chagall

The Bay represents romantic love and coupleship: which is often at the core of family creation and constitutes one of the most powerful relationships between people. Our subtheme was drawn to Chagall’s work because his style, rather than mere couples portraits or other representations of marriage that we considered, is much more successful at capturing the spirit of this sort of bond. Indeed, everything about the artist establishes him as an authority in this romantic theme.

Photo portrait of Chagall in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten, Library of Congress

Pablo Picasso:

“When Matisse dies, Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what color really is. I'm not crazy about his roosters and asses and flying violinists, and all the folklore, but his canvases are really painted, not just thrown together. Some of the last things he's done in Venice convince me that there's never been anybody since Renoir who has the feeling for light that Chagall has”

Marc Chagall was born in Vitebsk, Beorussia (now Belarus) in 1887. His family boasted nine children and was devoutly Jewish. He began his artistic career studying paintings under local artists and in 1907 went to St. Petersburg where he worked under stage designer Leon Bakst. Chagall eventually moved to Paris and his new social circle featured many avant garde poets and artists. These associations and their radical ideas about pictorial audacity influenced his own artistic style. The Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Fauvist paintings he saw also inspired Chagall to expand his previously somber palette and work with brighter colors.

“Under his influence, metaphor made its triumphal entry into modern painting”

-André Breton (who credited Chagall as the father of surrealism)

Chagall’s work is characterized by explosions of color and whimsical scenes portrayed with an almost childlike wonder and appreciation for beauty. His work, unlike that of the Impressionists, is concerned with capturing and relaying emotion rather than directly representing the world. His pieces share the joyful and spontaneous usage of color that his Impressionist connections draw upon in their work, but Chagall is concerned with translating reality into fantasy: or rather, isolating the fantastical in reality. This imagery was developed in his work in the theatre and embodies the folk tradition that pervaded the artists’ childhood memories. Chagall’s works incorporate a number of metaphorical motifs derived either from Russian fairy tales, Yiddish humor, the artist’s childhood, or his own relationships.

Marc Chagall, The Fiddler, 1913, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Marc Chagall's costuming and set design from "The Magic Flute" opera, February 1967, Metropolitan Opera, New York. Frank Dunand, Metropolitan Opera Archives.

Marc Chagall, Peace Window, 1964, United Nations, NYC. UN Photo by Lois Conner.

Detail from the Chagall Peace Windows. UN Photo by Lois Conner.

Chagall’s pursuit of various mediums tended to accommodate sentimentality as well. Throughout his career, Chagall worked extensively in designing sets for plays and ballets. Later in life he began mastering stained glass, which certainly complemented his bold color usage and fantastical imagery. Chagall completed a number of works for both synagogues and cathedrals. Above is a curtain from the play The Magic Flute and a stained glass “Peace Window” commissioned for the United Nations building in New York that memorializes the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjöld. In this detail from the window, you can see Chagall incorporate his famous floating lovers.

Marc Chagall, Over the Town, 1918, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (public domain US)

Marc Chagall, Birthday (L'anniversaire), 1915, MoMA, New York (public domain US)

The image of the flying lovers is one that arises frequently in Chagall’s work and depicts the artist with one of his three wives, whom he cared deeply about and who served as his muses. This is especially true of his relationship with his first wife, Bella. Their marriage is hailed as one of art history’s greatest love stories.

Marc Chagall, Bella with White Collar, 1917, Musee National d'Art Moderne (National Modern Art Museum), Georges Pompidou centre, Paris, France.

Bella’s description of meeting Chagall for the first time in 1909:

“When you did catch a glimpse of his eyes, they were as blue as if they’d fallen straight out of the sky. They were strange eyes… long, almond-shaped… and each seemed to sail along by itself, like a little boat.”

Marc’s reflection on first meeting Bella:

“Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me.”

Supposedly, it was love at first sight and the two were utterly enamored with one another, as expressed in these quotes. WWII necessitated that the couple escape to the United States with their daughter. Tragically, Bella caught a viral infection soon after and died amid wartime medication shortages. Chagall stopped creating for a number of months afterwards. When he returned to painting, his lost muse continued to dominate his artistic imagination. As evidence of the severe impact of this loss, around the same time Chagall started to illustrate Bella’s notebooks— a practice he kept up for the next 20 years. One of the sketchbooks was auctioned off at Sotheby’s Books and Manuscripts sale in New York back in 2011. The pages featured include a mournful Chagall illustration of the couple set across from French lyrics Bella translated into Yiddish.

Marc Chagall, The Bay (La Baie), 1962, 38 x 56 cm, Muscarelle Museum of Art.

Chagall was a true romantic, and in fact was quoted saying: “Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.” Although The Bay is the only piece from Kin that features lovers, and we have established such kinship as one of the most intimate bonds, I believe Chagall's lithograph carries its weight and well-represents the emotion and significance of romantic love in our subtheme. Based on the date of the lithograph, we could expect the woman shown to represent Chagall’s third wife, Vava. The couple clasping arms and flying above the world wonderfully evoke the feeling of being in love. The flight of the lovers, the exaggerated animals, the cheerful colors and the dreamy, fairly nondescript landscape all embody Chagall’s preoccupation with fairytales and his romanticization of the natural world and interpersonal relationships. The method of lithography, which often utilizes a crayon to create marks, directly contributes to the naïve joyfulness of the work. Studying Chagall confirms our perception of art-making as a form of well-being as the artist's pieces both honor his beloved muses and meditate on his childhood and the Russian fairytales that brought Chagall so much joy.