Marc Chagall’s La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses (Angel Bay with a Bouquet of Roses), 1967, is a richly atmospheric composition in which flowers, animals, the human figure, and the Mediterranean landscape merge into one of the artist’s unmistakable dream worlds. Dominating the composition is an immense bouquet of roses and foliage, its deep blues forming an almost nocturnal canopy across the sheet. Against this saturated field, Chagall introduces bursts of pink, crimson, yellow, green, and white that seem to glow from within, transforming the bouquet into something far more expansive than a conventional still life.

Within the flowers, Chagall hides an extraordinary collection of figures and symbols. A luminous white bird emerges dramatically from the upper left, its brilliant body cutting through the surrounding blues. At right, a mysterious blue female figure appears suspended among the blossoms, while below, a fish rises vertically from the base of the bouquet. Roses and smaller flowers drift between these figures, blurring distinctions between landscape, still life, fantasy, and memory. In the distance, the crescent moon settles toward the Mediterranean horizon while the architecture of Nice stretches along the shoreline. Chagall compresses these disparate elements into a single poetic vision in which the Côte d’Azur becomes not simply a geographic location, but a landscape of emotion and imagination.

The work is especially compelling for its extraordinary depth of blue. Rather than functioning merely as background, blue becomes the emotional atmosphere of the entire composition. Chagall repeatedly used intense blues to evoke dream, night, romance, and the Mediterranean, and here the color allows the pink roses, brilliant yellow flowers, white bird, and touches of green to emerge with remarkable intensity. The monumental scale of the bouquet relative to the landscape gives the flowers an almost supernatural presence—as though nature itself has expanded to envelop the figures and the Bay of Angels.

Created as a color lithograph on Arches wove paper, La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses possesses an unusually painterly character for a graphic work. The image originated from Chagall’s gouache and was translated into lithography by Charles Sorlier in collaboration with Marc Chagall, with the work printed by Mourlot, Paris. The reverse bears printed information identifying the image and describing its translation from Chagall’s original gouache into lithography, with Sorlier identified in connection with the lithographic interpretation and Mourlot as printer.

This collaborative process is particularly important to the visual character of the work. Rather than producing flat, mechanically separated areas of color, the lithographic surface preserves the impression of Chagall’s painterly handling. Passages appear stippled, rubbed, layered, and almost translucent, while other areas possess remarkable density. The white bird appears almost chalky against the blue; the roses have soft, irregular edges; and the vegetation dissolves into a profusion of marks and color. These variations give the composition the immediacy and richness of a painting while retaining the distinctive luminosity possible through color lithography.

Imagine Living with Marc Chagall’s La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses Every Day. La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses would be an exceptionally beautiful Chagall to live with because it combines tremendous visual presence with an atmosphere that is romantic, peaceful, and continually rewarding to explore. From across a room, the first impression is the magnificent expanse of Mediterranean blue punctuated by glowing roses, yellow blossoms, and the brilliant white bird—a combination that gives the work both sophistication and warmth. As one approaches, however, the composition becomes increasingly intimate: the woman concealed among the flowers, the fish rising from below, the distant moon, the shoreline, and the countless smaller passages of foliage and color gradually reveal themselves. It is the kind of image that changes depending on where you stand and how long you look. In a contemporary interior, the deep blue can act almost like a field of color, while in a more traditional room the flowers and romantic imagery connect naturally with Chagall’s lyrical sensibility. Most importantly, it has the quality that makes Chagall so pleasurable to live with—the work is dreamlike without feeling distant, sophisticated without becoming severe, and filled with enough mystery, beauty, and visual discovery that it never becomes merely decorative.

Created in 1967, Marc Chagall’s La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses (Angel Bay with a Bouquet of Roses) is a color lithograph on Arches wove paper and belongs to Chagall’s celebrated Nice and the Côte d’Azur series This impression is numbered in pencil in the lower left from the edition of 150 and hand-signed by Marc Chagall in pencil in the lower right margin. A separate edition of 75 impressions numbered in Roman numerals was also produced, in addition to a small number of artist’s proofs.

Catalogue Raisonné & COA:
Marc Chagall La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses (Angel Bay with a Bouquet of Roses) from Nice and The Côte d'Azur, 1967 is fully documented and referenced in the below catalog raisonnés and texts (copies will be enclosed as added documentation with the invoice accompanying the final sale of the work).
1. Sorlier, Charles. Chagall Lithographs 1974-1979, Vol V. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1984. Marc Chagall La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses (Angel Bay with a Bouquet of Roses) from Nice and The Côte d'Azur, 1967 is listed and illustrated as catalog raisonné no. C 30.
2. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany our Marc Chagall La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses (Angel Bay with a Bouquet of Roses) from Nice and The Côte d'Azur, 19

About the Framing:
Marc Chagall’s La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses (Angel Bay with a Bouquet of Roses), 1967, is framed according to museum-grade conservation standards, presented in a complementary molding and finished with silk-wrapped mats and optical-grade Plexiglas. The understated presentation allows Chagall’s saturated blues, brilliant floral colors, and delicate pencil signature to remain the focus while providing appropriate conservation protection for the Arches paper.

Marc Chagall and the Nice and the Côte d’Azur Series:
Marc Chagall (1887–1985) was born in Vitebsk, in present-day Belarus, and became one of the defining artists of twentieth-century modernism. Although he worked alongside many of the century’s major avant-garde movements, Chagall developed a visual language that remained unmistakably his own. Lovers floating through the sky, flowers, birds, fish, musicians, animals, villages, biblical figures, and intensely colored dream landscapes became recurring elements through which he explored love, memory, spirituality, exile, and imagination.

The South of France became particularly important during the later decades of Chagall’s career. Its brilliant light, Mediterranean vegetation, flowers, sea, and saturated colors provided an environment remarkably suited to his artistic vocabulary. Rather than recording the Côte d’Azur literally, Chagall transformed it into a poetic landscape where recognizable locations coexist with memories, lovers, animals, and fantastic figures.

Created in 1967, the Nice and the Côte d’Azur series consists of twelve color lithographs, with La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses among its most elaborate floral compositions. The Bay of Angels provides the recognizable setting, but Chagall allows the enormous bouquet to overwhelm conventional perspective. The Mediterranean landscape becomes secondary to the extraordinary world of flowers, bird, woman, and fish suspended above it.

The bouquet is especially characteristic of Chagall’s mature imagery. Flowers repeatedly appear throughout his work as expressions of abundance, celebration, romance, and emotional intensity. Here they become an entire environment. The white bird, female figure, and fish do not simply sit beside the bouquet; they seem to inhabit it, creating the sense that the flowers themselves contain another world. The moonlit coastline anchors that fantasy to Nice, joining Chagall’s private symbolic vocabulary with his profound attachment to the Mediterranean.

In this way, La Baie des Anges au Bouquet de Roses beautifully encapsulates Chagall’s ability to transform an identifiable place into something intensely personal and universal. Nice remains visible, yet it exists simultaneously as landscape, memory, dream, and celebration. The result is a work that captures both the physical beauty of the Côte d’Azur and the imaginative freedom that defines Chagall’s art.

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