The Poetry of Emotions – Chagall’s Surreal Visual Worlds and the Artistic Power of Emotion
“Mystère du Matin” (1946–1948) – Lush flowers, a blue rooster, a floating couple, a goat’s head, and a window against a glowing crimson background. Chagall, whose life was marked by emotional upheaval, new beginnings, love, loss, grief, and success in the 1930s and 1940s, has left us with “Mystère du Matin” (Eng. “Mystery of the Morning”)—a pictorial condensation of his inner life, reminiscent of a dream, and at the same time a symbol of life, deeply imbued with beauty, love, loss, and transience.
Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso are among the greatest artists of the 20th century, and their work not only left a decisive mark on the history of Modern art, but it also remains firmly anchored in the world’s collective visual memory to this day. While Picasso is regarded as an energetic, passionately romantic artist whose painting drew particular strength from his numerous tumultuous romantic relationships—from Olga to Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora Maar, Françoise Gilot, and Jacqueline Roque—Chagall’s distinctive quality lies in his unique poetic and emotional expressiveness. In Picasso’s case, the female nude and human physiognomy captivated the artist from the beginning, and he soon made them his artistic hallmark, rendering them with a strongly Cubist disarticulation and profound emotional insight. Chagall, by contrast, is regarded as the creator of a dreamlike parallel world that continues to captivate us to this day—a paradise-like realm filled with poetry, sensuality, and emotions so positive they can reconcile us with the existential pain and suffering of our earthly existence. Indeed, as early as 1946—one year after the end of World War II—James Johnson Sweeney, curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, noted on the occasion of the first American Chagall retrospective: "In an age that has fled from sentiment he has drawn constantly on it for his stimulation. And our debt to Chagall is to an artist who has brought poetry back into painting through subject matter, without any sacrifice of his painter's interest in the picture for itself, and entirely aside from any communication that can be put into words." (quoted from: Press release for the Chagall retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1946, https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2810; accessed October 28, 2026).

Chagall’s Fateful Years—Paris and America, Departure and New Beginnings, Loss and Success
Chagall's poetic creations, works inhabited by allegorical animals, flowers, and lovers, condense and combine thoughts and emotions, as well as emotionally charged images collected throughout the various stages of a rich life and preserved deeply within the human psyche. Born in Vitebsk in the Russian Empire in 1887, Chagall’s life as an Eastern European Jew was marked by frequent disruptions, including expulsion, flight, loss, and new beginnings. Chagall had moved to Paris to pursue his art as early as 1910, but four years later, following a family celebration, he found himself stranded in Russia for another eight years due to the outbreak of World War I, before he finally returned—this time with his young wife Bella—to the French avant-garde metropolis in 1922 to escape the increasing repression of the Soviet regime. In Paris, Chagall became deeply involved with the most diverse influences of the European avant-garde, ranging from Orphism to Cubism and Fauvism to Surrealism. In the years leading up to World War II, Chagall ultimately developed his very own style in Paris, which soon became accessible to a wide audience through his famous series of prints published by the Parisian art dealer Ambroise Vollard. Chagall’s exclusive contract with the prestigious Parisian gallery Bernheim-Jeune—which at the time also represented Paul Signac, Maurice Vlaminck, Pierre Bonnard, and Henri Matisse—catalyzed his artistic recognition in Europe beginning in 1927. By 1937, more than 50 of his works were already in German museum collections when they were confiscated for the Nazi propaganda exhibition “Degenerate Art.” In 1939, facing the threats of war—which did not spare even Paris—Chagall and his wife Bella initially retreated to Southern France before finally going into exile in the United States in the summer of 1941, fleeing from Marseille via Lisbon, and from then on living and working in New York. The Museum of Modern Art began planning a major retrospective of his work (1946), and his paintings were now becoming increasingly popular among American collectors as well. In 1948, around the time “Mystère du Matin” was created, the Tate in London also presented a major Chagall retrospective, which had previously been on view in Paris and Amsterdam. In the summer of 1948, three years after the war ended, Chagall left New York and returned by ship to his beloved adopted home of France.

“Mystère du Matin” – The Joy of Life and the Happiness of Love in the Face of Mortality
In the mid-1940s, Chagall was at the peak of his career. It was a period that coincided almost exactly with the most painful tragedy of his life. Bella, his muse, lover, and life partner—who, since their wedding in 1915, as seen in “L’Anniversaire” (1915, MoMA, New York), had repeatedly inspired him to the motifs of the bride and lovers—died of an infection in New York in 1944. Chagall was left behind in New York, lonely and deeply grieving. Although he would soon begin a new romantic relationship with the young housekeeper Virginia Haggard, the memory of Bella and the painful yet conciliatory gaze toward a past steeped in deep love distinguish his emotionally intense body of work—which, like “Mystère du Matin,” was created in New York in the years following Bella’s death—in a special way. Similarly, the distinctive quality of the famous “Bouquet aux Amoureux volants” (1934–1947), created around the same time as “Mystère du Matin” and part of the Tate Modern collection in London, lies in this profound artistic condensation of existential themes. Emotional extremes—love and happiness, but also pain, suffering, and grief over life's transience—are intertwined to create outstanding compositions. And as if Chagall had had a premonition of the painful experiences that still lay ahead in his life, the young artist described his fascination with painting in his autobiography from 1921–22 with the following words: “If all life inevitably comes to an end, we must fill our own lives with the colors of love and hope. I chose painting because it was as indispensable to me as food. It seemed to me like a window through which I could escape into another world.” (Marc Chagall, Ma Vie, Paris 1931)
A window also appears in the lower right part of “Mystère du Matin”. The window serves as an architectural reference to his lost homeland of Vitebsk—where he met Bella—but also as a symbol of the transition between inside and outside, night and day, life and death, dream and reality. The blue rooster, standing dominant and powerful before the lovers and the flowers, not only heralds the end of the night but also, as a symbol of fleeting time, represents mortality. Despite all the challenges he faced in life, however, Chagall’s view of life wasn’t one of despair but of positive emotions. In accordance with Hasidic teaching, Chagall believed that life—despite its transience—is illuminated and permeated by the eternal divine spark. Writing retrospectively in a letter to the then-owners of “Mystère du Matin” in July 1977—a painting the collector couple had recently given each other as a gift for their 20th wedding anniversary—Chagall wrote: “J’y ai exprimé la joie de vivre et le bonheur d’aimer que je voudrais communiquer à tous ceux qui s’intéressent à l’Art.” (Eng. “In it, I have expressed the joy of life and the happiness of love that I would like to convey to all those who are interested in art.”)

Complete provenance—from America via Switzerland to Germany
The paintings “Mystère du Matin” and its companion piece “Enchantement du Soir” were exhibited as loans from the collection of the New York publisher Anton Schutz in both the major Chagall retrospective in Tokyo in 1963 and in Toulouse in 1967. The wealthy art publisher and founder of the New York Graphic Society acquired both works directly from the artist. “Mystère du Matin” remained in Schutz’s collection until he died in 1977; it was subsequently sold by his daughter through the renowned Swiss gallery of Roman Norbert Ketterer to a private collection in the Rhineland and has remained in the family’s possession ever since. This outstanding painting was hidden from the public for nearly fifty years and will now be on display again for the first time at our anniversary auction. [JS]