BACK TO MODERNISM

MARC CHAGALL
(French, born Russia, 1887-1985)

Waiting (L'Attente), 1967
Oil on canvas
Bequest from the Nancy Batson Rash and Dillman A. Rash Collection 1998.19.1

This late work by the great colorist Marc Chagall includes most of the major elements of the painter’s signature iconography. A female figure, holding a bouquet of flowers, floats above a small village, her body merging with the figure of a large rooster. Below, her companion remains connected to the earthly realm below by the bright yellow cow, whose hooves touch the ground. A low-hanging moon indicates that more than half of the brilliant blue background is the sky; the ethereal world through which the woman flies dominates this picture, as it does the artist’s imagination.

Like most of Chagall’s best-known paintings, this one features an image of Vitebsk, the Jewish enclave in Russia where the artist grew up. The rooster and cow, which appear repeatedly in Chagall’s paintings, are both references to a peaceful, rural life.
Even after Chagall and his family permanently relocated to Paris in 1922, he longed for his homeland. Works from nearly every phase of his career include references to Vitebsk, and to the Jewish proverbs and folktales that shaped his art. Combining a fauvist use of strong color to express emotion with a surrealist emphasis on the fantastical world of dreams, Chagall created a unique body of work that celebrates both the power of nostalgia and the imagination.

Waiting is an excellent example of the artist’s virtuosity as a colorist, and of his skillful blending of past, present, and future into a glowing vision of a blissful eternity. The bride figure is probably his beloved first wife, Bella, who died two decades earlier; Chagall, the artist/farmer, is anticipating their reunion. The title "Waiting" refers to all that separates them.