Marc Chagall (1887-1985) - Testament expliqué par Esope - Eau-forte originale signée

Marc CHAGALL
"Testament explained by Aesop"
1927

Original etching signed in copper at the top left and countersigned in pencil by the artist at the bottom right

Dimensions: Paper 38 x 32.5 cm (sight) - Engraving 29.5 x 25 cm

Rare impression signed in pencil by the artist for “La Fontaine's Fables" (Plate 27)

History:
At the initiative of Ambroise Vollard, Marc Chagall etched for “The Fables of La Fontaine" 100 copper plates between 1927 and 1930, but it was Tériade who published the work in 1952

"One of my most persistent ambitions as editor had been to publish La Fontaine's Fables in a worthy illustrated edition. It was to the Russian painter Marc Chagall that I asked to illustrate the book. People did not understand this choice of a Russian painter to interpret the Frenchest of our poets. Yet it is precisely because of the Oriental sources of the fabulist that I had thought of an artist whose origins and culture would make this prestigious Orient familiar to him. My hopes were not disappointed: Chagall produced about a hundred dazzling gouaches."
Ambroise Vollard, Souvenirs d'un marchand de tableaux, Paris, 1937

Catalogue raisonné: Cramer 22

Excellent condition, presented with original mount (55.5 x 48.5 cm)