Executed in 1955, Marc Chagall’s Vence ou Les amoureux à l'âne depicts a pair of lovers floating above a picturesque hilltop village bathed in the soft light of a burning red sun while the moon rises simultaneously from below. As titled, the setting is recognizable as the town of Vence, a distinct view that serves as the backdrop for a number of Chagall’s works from the mid-1950s during varying times of day, ranging from intimate nocturnal scenes to radiant Mediterranean light.
Chagall moved to to Vence in 1950 and established the French town as his new home, purchasing “Les Collines”, a house with a studio annex, in the spring of that year. In his biography of the artist, Franz Meyer describes: “Since then virtually all Chagall’s pictures have been painted in the studio at “Les Collines.” The new environment is responsible not only for the view from his window on the little old walled town and the steeple of its medieval cathedral, which appears in so many of his pictures, but also for the novel charm of the painterly mood which embraces all things that grow and blossom” (Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall, New York, 1964, p. 501). The Côte d'Azur attracted many creative types after World War II, with artists such as Picasso and Matisse settling in the region particularly between Nice and Cannes. Chagall was closely in touch with this Mediterranean artist colony, and a fresh creative energy can certainly be sensed in his works from this period.
Soon after in 1952, Chagall married Valentine (Vava) Brodsky, following the tragic death of his beloved first wife, Bella. A serene sense of security and optimism is discernible in Vence ou Les amoureux à l'âne, reflecting the artist’s newfound stability in his personal life. The peaceful quality of the weightless lovers and the earthy tones of the town are contrasted with the flaming red sun and goat, which imbue the work with a passionate energy. Rendered in the artist’s characteristic dream-like fashion, Vence ou Les amoureux à l'âne is a sensitive homage to Chagall’s adopted hometown featuring his unique poetic imagery, which is praised by art historian Werner Haftmann: “It was Chagall’s own intuitive poetic capacity that made him one of the great image-makers of our century. It was not by chance that he turned most often to a medium like gouache in order to seize upon the salient features of that great flood of metaphorical images that welled up in him and to transport and transpose them into works of art to be shared with us” (Werner Haftmann, Marc Chagall: Gouaches, Drawings, Watercolors, New York, 1975, p. 153).