Detail of The Lovers by Chagall in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2019

The Lovers
1913–14

Object Details

Artist: Marc Chagall (French, Vitebsk 1887–1985 Saint-Paul-de-Vence)

Date: 1913–14

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 42 7/8 × 53 in. (108.9 × 134.6 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998

Accession Number: 1999.363.14


Fairy-tale details of a Russian town can be seen through the window of Chagall's imaginary scene of his room in Vitebsk, painted in Paris. The lovers represent the artist with his fiancée, Bella Rosenfeld. Mainly self-taught, Chagall developed a unique style that blends sentiment and fantasy - an effect the poet Guillaume Apollinaire called "supernatural.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/489971