first edition Hardcover
1956 · Paris
by Chagall, Marc (illus.); Daniel Gibelin (dir.); Georges Arnoult (typ.)
Paris: Editions Verve / Tériade éditeur, 1956. First edition. Hardcover. Fine. 1/275. Two volumes, folio (sheets approx. 44 by 33 cm) presented as a boxed set of 105 unnumbered original etchings in black. Loose in folded, unstitched signatures as issued. Each text signature enfolds a plate and a plate is interleaved between the signatures, each with a loose tissue guard sheet (all present). Deckled edges. Arches paper wrappers, titled in black at the front, with original glassines present; original chemises of grey paper-covered cloth boards with title stamped in gilt on spine, all housed in original matching slipcase (expertly restored and protected with mylar sleeve). Text in French. Copy no. 239, being one of 275 copies on Montval paper, signed by the illustrator in ink at the justification page in the first volume. There was also a signed and numbered edition of 20 hors-commerce in Roman numerals, and a hand-colored numbered edition of 100. Plates clean and fresh. Mild rubbing to chemises a slipcase; slipcase with light soiling; chemises with light dampstaining at bottom section (5 cm) of spines. A fine set in fine original wrappers, housed in very good chemises and slipcase.
First edition of this modern masterpiece of biblical illustration, often referred to as the Chagall Bible, "one of the very few major Bible illustrations of the 20th century... [which] combines the majesty of the Jewish tradition with the wit of popular art" (Garvey). After fleeing the Soviet Union in 1923, Marc Chagall (1887-1985) settled in France and began to work with Ambroise Vollard, a Parisian art dealer and publisher. Chagall's first two commissions were to illustrate Gogol's Les Ames mortes (Dead Souls) and Jean de la Fontaine's Fables. The commission of the present work by Vollard is described by Franz Meyer as "the major artistic event of 1930." To prepare for the project, Chagall visited Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. "Back in Paris the experience of light and landscape was the first inspiration for the Bible etchings..." (Meyer). Upon his return from Palestine in 1931 "the artist started work on the one hundred and five engravings destined to illustrate the Bible... Sixty-six plates were completed by 1939, the year in which Vollard died. After the war broke out, Chagall and his wife fled to the United States. The thirty-nine illustrations which remained were shelved until the end of the war. The work was resumed in 1952, after Chagall had returned to France. Like Dead Souls and La Fontaine's Fables, the Bible was taken up by Tériade and published by Verve" (Sorlier).
"It is significant that some of the bible etchings had to undergo a large number of states (as many as twelve), mostly with extensive alterations. Their artistic-spiritual concentration developed our of lengthy, untiring work on the copperplate" (Meyer). "These small pictures of great themes invite a close view not only of the details of the story, but also of the barely interpretable details of the artist's touch. They are etchings done from the standpoint of a painter who delights in color and the stroke of the brush, although they offer, too, a delicacy of drawing and other intimate qualities possible in etching alone... The needle weaves an infinitely fine web of tiny points, hatchings, lines, grains of black -- a shimmering veil, dense and soft, created with joy, filled with light and movement, often playful, sometimes grave, always captivating through its texture and tones... The resulting range of the pictures is amazingly rich. I do not have to itemize what is clear enough in the plates -- Chagall's capacity to create the sorrowful and gay, the grave and the charming, scenes of the most ingratiating lightness and the awesome apparitions of God." Schapiro goes on to suggest that "a characteristic unity of Jewish awareness, with its strong ethical and communal content and longing for Zion" is manifest in a tripartite selection of themes: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt -- the great ancestors who founded the Jewish community and received from God a covenant and law; the achievement of nationhood with Joshua, Samson, David and Solomon; the prophets Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in their integrity and solitude, their vision of God and prophecies of the misfortunes and consolations of Israel. "He has represented themes of an older tradition not in a spirit of curiosity or artifice, but with a noble devotion... If we had nothing of Chagall but his Bible, he would be for us a great modern artist, but also a surprising anomaly in the art of an age which otherwise seems so remote from the content and attitude of this work."
The copper plates were subsequently cancelled and given to the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall in Nice by Marc and Vava Chagall. The verses of the Bible reproduced in this edition are taken from the translation based on the Hebrew texts which the pastors and professors belonging to the Eglise de Genève published in Geneva in 1638. The text was typeset in Romain du Roi, 32-point body, a typeface engraved by Grandjean in the eighteenth century at the request of Louis XIV. Composition and presswork were supervised by Georges Arnoult. The book was printed at the Imprimerie Nationale de France on 14 December 1956. Daniel Gibelin was in charge. (Sorlier). References: P. Cramer, Livres 29; E. M. Garvey (ed.), The Artist & the Book 53; F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, pp. 383-395; M. Schapiro [in:] Illustrations for the Bible for Marc Chagall [Verve 33-34, American edition] (New York, 1956), forward; C. Sorlier, Chagall, Le livre de livres / Illustrated Books. pp. 62-81. (Inventory #: 54438)
First edition of this modern masterpiece of biblical illustration, often referred to as the Chagall Bible, "one of the very few major Bible illustrations of the 20th century... [which] combines the majesty of the Jewish tradition with the wit of popular art" (Garvey). After fleeing the Soviet Union in 1923, Marc Chagall (1887-1985) settled in France and began to work with Ambroise Vollard, a Parisian art dealer and publisher. Chagall's first two commissions were to illustrate Gogol's Les Ames mortes (Dead Souls) and Jean de la Fontaine's Fables. The commission of the present work by Vollard is described by Franz Meyer as "the major artistic event of 1930." To prepare for the project, Chagall visited Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem. "Back in Paris the experience of light and landscape was the first inspiration for the Bible etchings..." (Meyer). Upon his return from Palestine in 1931 "the artist started work on the one hundred and five engravings destined to illustrate the Bible... Sixty-six plates were completed by 1939, the year in which Vollard died. After the war broke out, Chagall and his wife fled to the United States. The thirty-nine illustrations which remained were shelved until the end of the war. The work was resumed in 1952, after Chagall had returned to France. Like Dead Souls and La Fontaine's Fables, the Bible was taken up by Tériade and published by Verve" (Sorlier).
"It is significant that some of the bible etchings had to undergo a large number of states (as many as twelve), mostly with extensive alterations. Their artistic-spiritual concentration developed our of lengthy, untiring work on the copperplate" (Meyer). "These small pictures of great themes invite a close view not only of the details of the story, but also of the barely interpretable details of the artist's touch. They are etchings done from the standpoint of a painter who delights in color and the stroke of the brush, although they offer, too, a delicacy of drawing and other intimate qualities possible in etching alone... The needle weaves an infinitely fine web of tiny points, hatchings, lines, grains of black -- a shimmering veil, dense and soft, created with joy, filled with light and movement, often playful, sometimes grave, always captivating through its texture and tones... The resulting range of the pictures is amazingly rich. I do not have to itemize what is clear enough in the plates -- Chagall's capacity to create the sorrowful and gay, the grave and the charming, scenes of the most ingratiating lightness and the awesome apparitions of God." Schapiro goes on to suggest that "a characteristic unity of Jewish awareness, with its strong ethical and communal content and longing for Zion" is manifest in a tripartite selection of themes: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the story of Moses and the Exodus from Egypt -- the great ancestors who founded the Jewish community and received from God a covenant and law; the achievement of nationhood with Joshua, Samson, David and Solomon; the prophets Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in their integrity and solitude, their vision of God and prophecies of the misfortunes and consolations of Israel. "He has represented themes of an older tradition not in a spirit of curiosity or artifice, but with a noble devotion... If we had nothing of Chagall but his Bible, he would be for us a great modern artist, but also a surprising anomaly in the art of an age which otherwise seems so remote from the content and attitude of this work."
The copper plates were subsequently cancelled and given to the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall in Nice by Marc and Vava Chagall. The verses of the Bible reproduced in this edition are taken from the translation based on the Hebrew texts which the pastors and professors belonging to the Eglise de Genève published in Geneva in 1638. The text was typeset in Romain du Roi, 32-point body, a typeface engraved by Grandjean in the eighteenth century at the request of Louis XIV. Composition and presswork were supervised by Georges Arnoult. The book was printed at the Imprimerie Nationale de France on 14 December 1956. Daniel Gibelin was in charge. (Sorlier). References: P. Cramer, Livres 29; E. M. Garvey (ed.), The Artist & the Book 53; F. Meyer, Marc Chagall, pp. 383-395; M. Schapiro [in:] Illustrations for the Bible for Marc Chagall [Verve 33-34, American edition] (New York, 1956), forward; C. Sorlier, Chagall, Le livre de livres / Illustrated Books. pp. 62-81. (Inventory #: 54438)
(818) 920-9968
