Le Poète, 1966

"Le Poète" is a watercolor, gouache, pastel over black lithographic ink on paper painting created by Marc Chagall in 1966. The artwork is estate-signed 'Marc Chagall' lower right. The artwork ships framed in a custom gold leaf frame and has a framed size of 30.5 x 27".

Marc Chagall’s "Le Poète," created in 1966, belongs to one of the most celebrated periods of the artist’s late career, when his imagery had reached a remarkable synthesis of memory, poetry, and spirituality. In Chagall’s world, the poet is more than a writer. He is a dreamer, witness, lover, and messenger, suspended between the visible world and the realm of imagination. Floating figures, flowers, birds, and contemplative faces merge into a visual language that is unmistakably Chagall’s.

The published color lithograph is catalogued as Mourlot 442, issued in a signed and numbered edition of 50 with additional proofs. The present work, however, is far more unusual. Rather than a standard editioned lithograph, it is an original hand-colored impression printed from the black lithographic line and individually enhanced with watercolor, gouache, and pastel. This process returns the image to the immediacy of Chagall’s studio practice, where printed line and painterly color coexist in a uniquely personal way.

This distinction is central to the work’s significance. Chagall approached lithography not as mechanical reproduction but as an extension of drawing and painting. Here, vivid blues and greens, absent from the published edition, are applied entirely by hand, giving the surface remarkable depth, texture, and individuality. Every brushstroke reinforces the sense that this is not simply a print, but a unique work on paper.

Executed in 1966, "Le Poète" emerged during a particularly important moment in Chagall’s career. He had just completed his monumental "Biblical Message" cycle, later housed in the Musée National Marc Chagall in Nice, the first French national museum dedicated to a living artist. The same atmosphere of reflection and spiritual lyricism permeates this composition. A monumental face dominates the sheet, surrounded by a dove, flowers, graceful figures, and architectural forms that evoke Chagall’s enduring themes of love, poetry, memory, and transcendence. Rather than illustrating a narrative, the work becomes a meditation on the creative imagination itself.

The work also benefits from exceptional provenance. Although not hand-signed, it bears the Marc Chagall estate signature stamp and is accompanied by estate certification. It was originally acquired directly from the estate of Charles Sorlier, Chagall’s longtime collaborator at Atelier Mourlot and one of the key figures behind the artist’s celebrated lithographic legacy.

Closely connected to the catalogued image Mourlot 442 yet distinguished by its hand-painted execution, "Le Poète" occupies a unique place within Chagall’s graphic oeuvre. It combines the precision of lithographic line with the spontaneity of watercolor, gouache, and pastel, resulting in a work that embodies the qualities collectors prize most in Chagall: luminous color, poetic symbolism, and the ability to transform ordinary motifs into timeless visions of imagination and hope.