Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

The Comité Marc Chagall has confirmed the authenticity of this work.

Portraying a group of musicians against the blue backdrop of Paris, Esquisse pour 'Le flûtiste' captures Marc Chagall’s penchant for creating dreamy images in which colours, animal and human forms merge, evoking memories and fantasies. On the left, a figure with the head of a goat is directing a band of curious creatures: a purple flutist, with the body of a rooster, another floating just above it and a man shaped as a violin, a lyrical chimera who appears often in Chagall’s work. Music had biographical resonance for Chagall: he had learnt how to play the violin as a child and had grown up close to an uncle who played the fiddle at Jewish weddings in his hometown.

In 1973, the year he painted Esquisse pour 'Le flûtiste', Chagall had the chance to visit his native Russia, invited by the then minister of culture Ekaterina Furtseva. At the Tetryakov Gallery in Moscow, Chagall saw, after more than fifty years, the masterpiece of his youth: the mural paintings he designed for the State Jewish Chamber Theatre in 1920, which had been stored away unseen until then. That same year, on the occasion of the artist’s eighty-sixth birthday, a museum entirely dedicated to his work - the Musée National Message Biblique - opened its doors, making Chagall the first artist in France to whom a museum was dedicated during his lifetime. When he created Esquisse pour 'Le flûtiste', he was thus able to instil his works with a retrospective quality, as he looked back upon the monumental achievements of his career.