Chagall, Marc – “La Jument de Compere Pierre” – (Pierre’s Mare). Original heliogravure from “Contes de Bocacce”. Published in Verve Magazine 1950 by Teriade in 1950.

Original heliogravure from “Contes de Boccace”, as interpreted by Marc Chagall.

La Jument de Compere Pierre – Pierre’s Mare

To increase his profit, a priest drove various goods to the fairs of Puglia on a mare that belonged to him. While travelling the country, he met Pierre, who was also going to the fairs but on a donkey. Sometimes, the priest stayed at Pierre’s house, sleeping in a stable next to his mare.

One day he told Pierre’s wife, Jeanette, that he was able to transform his mare into a pretty girl, if he so wished. Jeanette told Pierre about this, suggesting that the priest turn Jeanette into a mare so that they could increase their profits by carrying more goods to the markets. As the metamorphosis was taking place, Pierre, when it got to the placing of the tail, found the whole operation not to his liking and began to shout to the priest to stop. The priest accused Pierre of preventing him from performing his miracle and the wife protested saying that her husband had spoilt all her ideas for improving their life.

Marc Chagall (1887- 1985) was born Moishe Shagal near the city of Vitebsk, Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal, which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a Levitic family. Chagall’s art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society. Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and prayer. In 1910, Chagall relocated to Paris to develop his artistic style where he enrolled at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde school of art. In 1914 he returned to Russia during which time he worked as a stage designer and art teacher, before returning to Paris in 1922.Marc Chagall’s dreamlike compositions depict aspects of the artist’s personal and family histories, and those of Eastern European folklore at large. Flying figures, elements of Jewish tradition, peasant life, and animals are frequent motifs. Chagall’s practice—which spanned painting, printmaking, books, ceramics, and stained glass—was immensely influential in the development of 20th-century art: His supernatural subjects and emotional gestures bridged the work of earlier avant-garde movements such as Cubism, Fauvism, and Symbolism with later modernist styles such as Surrealism. Chagall’s career was disrupted by the World Wars, and while the artist moved between Russia, France, and the United States, he managed to exhibit widely during his lifetime both within the continent and in the U.S. His work belongs in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Chagall also produced stained-glass windows for Hadassah University Medical Center’s Abbell Synagogue in Jerusalem, the Saint-Étienne Cathedral in Metz, the United Nations building in New York City, and the St. Stephen church in Mainz, Germany.