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Musical Images as a Reflection of the Artistic Universalism of Marc Chagall 

 

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personality and art. Music is depicted as a fate, professional art as a verdict, 

persistently accompanying a person throughout his whole life. Apart from 

the player’s confluence with his instrument, male and female origins are 

combined here. A bifacial androgynous creature (full and half-face), whose 

head is covered by a bridal veil and a hat, personifies the eternal striving of  

enamoured lovers for the undivided possession of  each other. The 

uncontrollable affinity of  opposites, described in the Greek myth of  

Hermaphroditus, and embedded in the imagery of  Zbruchky idols by 

Slavonic pagans, was represented for Chagall by his happy match with Bella 

Rosenfield, and was spurted into his canvases through the imagery of  dual 

and triune creatures. A friendly animal, accompanying the musician with a 

tiny violin, is also present in the picture.  

The person-cello is one of  Chagall’s stable images which migrate 

from work to work. We see variations of  it in the etching A Musician (fig. 

16); in the paintings Music (fig. 40), Concert (fig. 39) and Revolution (fig. 17); in 

the painting of  the dome lamp of  the Parisian opera, where it is endowed 

with wings; and in other works. 

 

 

                

 

 

 

 

 

In some works, this metamorphosis, the intergrowth of  instrument 

and its possessor into each other, has not happened completely (Wedding 

Candles, A Bride with Blue Face, fig. 7), but it is obviously specified. Chagall’s 

cello frequently exceeds the standard size, approaching bass-viol dimensions 

in length of  body, if  narrower. The musician plays standing, not always 

Fig. 15.  A Violinist, 1939. Oil on 

canvas, 100/73 cm. Private collection

Fig.  16. A Musician. Illustration for 

the book My Life, 1922-1923. Paper, 

etching, drypoint,

25/19 cm; 

27.5/21.6 cm. 

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L. G. Safiullina, G. I. Batyrshina 

 

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pressing the strings with his fingers, pointing at the conventional, symbolic 

character of  representation of  the instrument.  

 

 

 

Fig. 17. Revolution, 1937. Oil on canvas, 50/100 cm. Private collection 

 

In 1914-1915 Chagall created a number of  works, depicting 

mandolin-players, in which he embodies different stages and sides of  the 

processes of  musical performance. One of  his seven sisters, Liza, and his 

only brother David act as his models. The portraits are created in an 

expressionist manner, with typical distortion of  the body’s natural 

proportions and grotesque thinning of  facial features. A portrait Liza with 

Mandolin (fig. 18) depicts a girl only just learning to play the instrument. Her 

mouth is slightly open from concentration; her head is bent to one side to 

better see the fingerboard and the published notation beside her. The pupil’s 

diligence and scrupulousness can be seen through her pose, although red 

flaming aurora of  the fading evening, falling on the windowsill and echoed 

in the colour of  the girl’s skirt, destroy the tranquillity of  this idyllic picture 

of  home music-making. The apparent discrepancy between the sizes of  her 

hands demands the beholder’s attention, creating a feeling of  physical 

inadequacy: her rachitic right hand is almost twice as small as the left one, a 

massive hand with inverted fingers. A disturbing impression is also left by 

the face, depicted briefly, in general terms, with a twisted nose and 

apparently empty eye pits (these are indeed lowered eyelids), resembling a 

clown’s mask.  

Chagall provides a quite different variant of  musical performance in 

the Portrait of  Brother David with Mandolin, of  a stately, seated young man with 

a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth, confidently playing his instrument. The 

act apparently gives him pleasure, takes him away to his recollections, as 

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Musical Images as a Reflection of the Artistic Universalism of Marc Chagall 

 

81

evidenced by half-closed eyes and the smile wandering across his face (fig. 

19). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David was the painter’s younger brother, who lost his leg in the First 

World War and died young, far away from his relatives. This picture, created 

in nostalgic moderate blue tones, reflects 

the painter’s grief. Chagall left the 

following lines in his autobiography:  

“Poor David! He sleeps in Crimea 

among the aliens. He was so young and 

he loved me so much - the sound of  

his name is dearer for me than the 

names of  attractive far off  countries, - 

with him I feel the smell of  native land.  

My brother. I could do nothing. 

Tuberculosis. Cypresses. You died away 

in a strange land.... My memory is 

burnt. I made your portrait, David. You 

are smiling, your teeth are shining. A 

mandolin is in your hands. Everything 

is in blue tones.... My heart is with 

you.”

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His recollections of  David held 

Chagall fast and, many years on, 

troubled with feelings of  guilt and bitter loss:  

                                                 

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 Chagall 1994. 

Fig. 18. Liza with Mandolin, 1914.

Oil on cardboard. Private collection

Fig.  19. Portrait of Brother David with 

Mandolin, 1914. Cardboard, gouache, 

49.5/37 cm. Primorsky State Gallery of 

Vladivostok 

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