Exhibition: Who Needs Colour . . . : original paintings, drawings and prints by Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Hockney, Riley, Haring, Hirst and Banksy for sale

Executed in 1949–50, Sketch for The Vindictive Philosopher was created in preparation for the twentieth of Marc Chagall’s illustrations to the Tales of Boccaccio, published in Verve in Paris in 1950. The project belongs to the artist’s renewed engagement with literary illustration following his return to France after the Second World War. Stamped with the signature ‘Chagall’ and inscribed ‘Pour Boccace’, the drawing remained in the artist’s estate and subsequently passed by descent. Its authenticity has been confirmed by the Comité Marc Chagall. A nude female figure occupies the centre of the sheet, her body described through fluid contours and areas of diluted ink. She emerges from a densely worked background in which broad washes, rapid strokes and passages of exposed paper create pronounced contrasts of light and shadow. A circular form suspended above the figure introduces a further point of visual tension, although its identity—whether celestial body, architectural opening or symbolic presence—remains deliberately unresolved. The drawing formed part of Chagall’s response to Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, prepared at the suggestion of the influential publisher Tériade. The resulting images were published alongside reproductions of fifteenth-century manuscript miniatures illustrating the same narratives. Rather than imitate their descriptive precision, Chagall reinterpreted the stories through freely modulated washes of India ink, using monochrome to create effects of light, atmosphere and emotional intensity. Although conceived in relation to a particular literary episode, the drawing does not depend upon a literal reconstruction of the narrative. Gesture, tonal contrast and spatial ambiguity instead convey the psychological charge of the scene. As an original preparatory work, Sketch for The Vindictive Philosopher offers insight into Chagall’s process of transforming a historical text into an image shaped by his own poetic vocabulary, uniting literature, sensuality and imaginative invention.