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Marc Chagall    1887-1985 LES TROIS CIERGES Signed and dated 1939 Oil on canvas 51 1/4 by 38 1/4in. 130.2 by 97.2cm. The year 1939 marked an important turning point in Chagall's art. The works he produced during that year define the closing of one period in the artist's oeuvre and the opening of another. In this group of works, all executed in Paris just before the outbreak of World War II, the structure of the compositions reflects a greater density and unity than in any other works Chagall had produced since his return to Paris in 1923. In this work, this is evident both in the composition as a whole and in the treatment of specific details, such as the houses and figures below the embracing couple. The color employed by the artist - low pitched and muted to signify the somber mood of the time - attains greater autonomy and takes the lead more decisively in the structure of the picture space. Les trois cierges is a new elegiac version of all the myths Chagall had delighted in; the loving couple, the bouquet of flowers, the angels, the cow, and the violinist. All are there, but now all are affected by an indefinable melancholy, by a rhythmic throb of inarticulate grief. Discussing the present composition in the catalogue for the Royal Academy of Art exhibition in London, Susan Compton wrote: "The theme of lovers with flowers is here treated in a far more energetic composition whose sombre tonality matches its mood. It makes a contrast with another picture of a bride but with a Christian title, Madonna of the Village (fig. 2). The Three Candles can be seen as its Jewish counterpart, for the bride and groom are mysteriously standing on a marriage canopy, held up by small angels. Amongst the angels is a violinist, a traditional player at Jewish weddings, and immediately behind the three candles lies a heifer, a symbol of Israel, which appears in the painting Solitude (fig. 3). But the picture is loaded with further symbolism, for it was painted in the two years before the Chagalls left France for the United States, at a time when their own future and, more specifically, the future of their friends and relations in faraway Vitebsk, must have seemed unsure. There is bewilderment on the faces of the newly married couple with a lifetime before them, as they contemplate the tapers that had been part of so many festivals of their youth. This picture expresses the hopes and fears of any newly married couple as well as reflecting the reaction of the painter to an anxious moment in history" (Susan Compton, Chagall, exhibition catalogue, London, Royal Academy of Art, 1985, p. 215). Provenance: Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York Acquired by Reader's Digest in 1946 Exhibited: Paris, Galerie Mai, Chagall: Oeuvres Recente, 1940 New York, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings and Gouaches from 1910 to 1941 (by) Marc Chagall, 1941, no. 11 (dated 1938) Pasadena Art Museum, Chagall: Seventieth Anniversary Exhibition, 1957 New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., Reader's Digest Collection, 1963, p. 25 Tokyo, Palaceside Building, Forty Paintings from The Reader's Digest Collection, 1966, no. 8 London, Royal Academy of Arts; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Chagall, 1985, no. 82 New York, Wildenstein & Co. (traveling exhibition), Selections from the Reader's Digest Collection, 1985-86, pp. 18-19 Auckland City Art Gallery, The Reader's Digest Collection: Manet to Picasso, 1989, pp. 24-25 New York, The Jewish Museum, Assignment: Rescue, the Story of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee, 1997-98 Literature: Cahiers d'Art, 1940, p. 35 Raissa Maritain, Marc Chagall, New York, 1943, illustrated pl. IV Lionello Venturi, Marc Chagall, New York, 1956, illustrated pl. 73 Walter Erben, Marc Chagall, New York, 1957, p. 108,illustrated pl. 35 Werner Haftman, Marc Chagall, New York, 1973, p. 29 Stella Pandell Russell, Art in the World, New York, 1988, illustrated.