Daphnis and Chloe
The Complete Suite of 42 Works
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FORWARD
Marc Chagall first visited Greece on his honeymoon with his wife in 1952 and although his art had been inspired by ancient Greek literature since the early 50’s, this happy time while he was falling deeper in love with his wife, Chagall also fell in love with the Greek landscape. The pastoral hillsides, archaic sculpture, green-blue sea, and especially the brilliant Greek light inspired the preliminary sketches and gouaches to illustrate the love story, Daphnis & Chloe. These pages drenched in blues, shimmering yellows and shadowed in deep purples, preserved Chagall’s emotional experiences in Greece upon returning to Paris and collaborating with master lithographer Charles Sorlier for the final series.
In Marc Chagall’s greatest lithographs such as those from Daphnis & Chloe, he created works that are the equal of his finest achievements in painting, drawing, stained glass and ceramics. Daphnis & Chloe is regarded as one of Marc Chagall’s crowning achievements and is of the most successful and desirable series of his career. Each of the forty-two magical lithographs is saturated from edge to edge with layer upon layer of brilliantly hued colored inks invented especially for this monumental suite. Daphnis & Chloe is not only marveled for its luscious pictorial success in transporting the viewer to the pastoral Greek landscape where the love story took place, but also the great strides Chagall made in advancing the medium of color lithography.
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In 1957 Chagall began with the translation of the forty-two preparatory gouaches into color lithographs, working with Charles Sorlier at the Ateliers Mourlot. As many as twenty-five colors – and subsequently twenty-five lithography stones – were required for each of the enchanting prints; thus the work process extended over a period of four years. In 1961, the series was published by Tériade, and became an instant success. It was typical in lithography at this time to use six to eight common colors for one lithograph, so in inventing new, more vibrantly colored inks and laying them upon one another to create density and texture, Chagall revolutionized the medium of lithography as we knew it.
SUMMARY
2 Frontispiece - M. 308 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
No story is more aptly suited to the dream-like, romantic sensibilities of Marc Chagall, who illustrated Longus' timeless masterpiece with the 42 exquisite lithographs to follow in this catalog. Each plate whimsically and expressively describes their adventures in both distress and in bliss ultimately leading to the happy marriage of the young couple. Daphnis & Chloe has delighted our hearts for centuries and will continue to do so for centuries to come.
Although Daphnis and Chloe was written by the ancient Greek poet, Longus, in the 2nd century AD, the tale continues to charm and inspire modern audiences to this day. A tender novel describing eager and inept young love, Daphnis and Chloe tells the story of a baby boy and girl who are discovered separately, two years apart, alone and exposed on a Greek mountainside. Taken in by a goatherd and a shepherd respectively, and raised near the town of Mytilene, on the Greek Isle of Lesbos, they grow to maturity unaware of one another's existence until the mischievous god of love, Eros, creates in them a sudden overpowering desire for one another. The absolute innocents, young Daphnis and Chloe fall in love, but they don't know what love is.
As they puzzle over their curious predicament, their beauty attracts would-be seducers and scheming suitors, and their happiness is threatened on all fronts. As their guardians confer and nymphs and gods get involved, Longus weaves a pastoral romance radiant with the beauty of nature and the nature of innocence. Eros, Dionysus, Pan, and the Nymphs all collaborate to guide the adolescents into the mystery of Love. Daphnis and Chloe is the best known of the early Greek romances, and a precursor to the modern novel. This indelible, sweetly humorous, and sensuous tale has inspired Western writers, composers, and artists for centuries.
3 So he went up close and found that it was a boy – a fine big one, and better dressed than foundlings usually are, for it had a little cloak dyed with genuine purple, a golden brooch, and a dagger with an ivory hilt. Lamon Discovers Daphnis - M. 309 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” Dryas Discovers Chloe- M. 310 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” Lamon’s and Dryas’s Dream - M. 311 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
4 Daphnis is beautiful, but so are the flowers. His pipe does sound beautiful but so do the nightingales – and I don’t worry about them. If only I were his pipe so that he’d breathe into me! Daphnis and Chloe beside the Fountain- M. 313 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” The Wolf Pit - M. 312 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
25 1/4”
So now that all things were possessed by the beauty of the season, these two tender young creatures began to imitate the sights and sounds around them.
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Springtime in the Meadow - M. 314 5/8 x
16
M.
16 5/8
6 Chloe’s
One day – for it was now Daphnis’s turn to realize what love meant – he and Dorcon engaged in a beauty-contest. Chloe was the judge, and the prize for victory was the privilege of kissing Chloe. Judgement - 315 x
25 1/4”
kiss, but one
she
7 Chloe’s Kiss - M. 316 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” Dorcon’s Strategy - M. 317 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
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It
an
Chloe waited no longer but, partly because she was pleased by the compliment and partly because she had been wanting to a long time, jumped up and kissed him. was artless and inexperienced sort of which was quite capable of setting a heart on fire.
kiss Daphnis for
Noon, in Summer - M. 318 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
The Little Swallow - M. 319 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
What sweet eyes are those that sleep? How sweetly breathes that rosie mouth...But I am afraid to kiss her. For her kiss stings my heart and makes me mad like new honey.
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9 I have accustomed my herd to follow the sound of this pipe and to obey the charm of it... Take the pipe and kiss me, sweet Chloe. Weep a tear or two for me and then remember Dorcon. Death of Dorcon - M. 320 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
10 For Chloe seeing Daphnis naked, thought she had fallen on the most sweet and florid beauty and therefore could not choose but melt as being not able to find him the least moment to dislike or blame. The Nymph’s Cave - M. 321 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
11 Love, sweet Chloe, is a god, a young youth, and very fair and wing’d to fly... He delights in youth, follows beauty, and gives our fantasies their wings. His powers are so vast. He governs the elements, rules the stars and domineers even over the gods that are his peers. The Wine Harvest - M. 322 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” Philetas’s Lesson - M. 323 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
12 He fell into a deep sleep, and three nymphs appeared to him - ladies of tall stature, very fair, half naked, and barefooted.Daphnis’ Dream and the Nymphs - M. 325 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” The Young Methymneans - M. 324 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
13 I am not a boy, though I seem to be so, but am older than Saturn. I knew thee when, when thou was just a boy. It was I who gave her (your wife) to thee in marriage… and now I take care of Daphnis and Chloe. Philetas’s Orchard - M. 326 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
14 They sailed up to the fields of Daphnis and Chloe and coming suddenly down upon them, preyed upon all that they could grasp… Chloe was with her flocks, and the enemies invading she fled.
Chloe is Carried Off Methymneans -
by the
M. 327 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
15 Now as soon as Chloe was set on shore, the sound of the pipe from the promontory began to be heard again; not martial and terrible as before, but perfectly pastoral. Captain Bryaxis’s Dream - M. 328 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
16 The distance he had to cover was not more than a mile, but the snow, which had not yet melted gave him a great deal of trouble. Love, however, can find a way through anything – fire, water or Scythian snow. The Bird Chase - M. 329 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
They
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also offered him the firstlings of the meat and poured an even larger bowlful of wine as a libation. Chloe sang and Daphnis played his pipe. Pan’s Banquet - M. 331 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” Sacrifices Made to the Nymphs - M. 330 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
18 The goats went along with the sheep, and Daphnis walked beside Chloe. Thus they feasted on each other’s company until it was dark, and agreed to drive their flocks out earlier than usual next morning. Winter - M. 333 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” The Syrinx Fable - M. 332 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
But before giving him his wine, she drank a sip of it herself; and only then did she pass it on to him. And he drank slowly, although he was very thirsty, and thus by his slowness prolonged his enjoyment.
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The Meal at Dryas’s House - M. 334 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
man’s
It was a sight calculated to turn even an old thoughts to love; Daphnis and Chloe, who were young and bursting with health and had long been in search of love, were positively set on fire by what they heard, their hearts melted away at what they saw, and they too felt the need for something more than kisses and embraces.
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but
Spring - M. 335 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
21 Daphnis and Lycenion - M. 336 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
When the lesson in love-making ended, Daphnis was still enough of a goatherd to feel like rushing back to Chloe, and immediately putting his new knowledge into practice – as though he were afraid of forgetting it, if he wasted any time.
22 The sun was growing hotter every day, for spring was coming to an end and summer was beginning; so again they found new pleasures, this time summery ones. He would swim in the rivers and she would bathe in the springs; he on his pipe would compete with the whistling on the wind in the pines, and she would vie with the nightingales in song.Chloe - M. 339 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” The Dead Dolphin and the 300 Drachmas - M. 338 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” The Summer Season - M. 337 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
23 One man, the cox, was singing sea –shanties to them, and the rest were keeping in time with him and shouting the choruses in unison. Now when they did this in the open sea, their shouting was inaudible from land, because their voices flowed out into a huge space of air. Echo - M. 340 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
24 A lad who was only used to seeing such things as goats, and hillside, and peasants, and Chloe, was about to have his first sight of a master who had been merely a name to him before. Orchard - M. 341 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
25 Whatever sort of body he finds beauty in, he’s caught just the same. That’s why people have actually fallen in love with trees and rivers and wild beasts – though who could help feeling sorry for a lover that had to go in fear of his beloved? Daphnis and Gnathon - M. 343 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” The Trampled Flowers - M. 342 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
26 The child is ours, Daphnis is your son and he’s been grazing his own father’s goats. While she was still speaking and Dionysophanes was kissing the tokens and weeping from excess of joy, Astylus, who had realized that Daphnis was his brother, flung off his cloak and started running down from the garden, wishing to be the first to give Daphnis a kiss. Chloe is Dressed and Braided by Cleariste - M. 322 16 5/8 x 12 5/8” Arrival of Dionysophanes - M. 344 16 5/8 x 12 5/8”
1 On the strength of this Lamon and Myrtale called down every blessing on Astylus’s, head and Daphnis brought him some presents – kids, cheeses, birds with their broods, grapes on their vineshoots and apples on their boughs. The presents also included some wine with a very fine bouquet –the finest wine you could drink. 27 The Temple and History of Bacchus - M. 346 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
Megacles Recognizes his Daughter during the Feast - M. 347 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
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It was possible for everyone to see what beauty was like when enhanced by finery; for when Chloe was dressed and had braided up her hair and washed her face, she seemed to everyone so much more beautiful that even Daphnis hardly recognized her, and even without the tokens you would have sworn Dryas was not the father of a girl like that.
He dreamed that the Nymphs were begging Love to consent at last to the marriage; and that love, after unstringing his little bow and putting away his quiver, commanded him to invite all the lading citizens of Mytelene to a feast, and at the moment when he filled the last bowl of wine to show each of them the tokens.
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Wedding Feast in the Nymph’s Grotto - M. 348 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
Now, when night fell, all the guests escorted them to the bridal chamber, some playing Pan-pipes, some playing flutes, and some holding up great torches... But Daphnis and Chloe lay down naked together, and began to embrace and kiss one another; and for all the sleep they got that night they might as well have been owls. Night
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The Wedding
- M. 349 16 5/8 x 25 1/4”
Marc Chagall
(b. 1887, Vitebsk, Russia - d. 1985, Paris, France)
The forty-two lithographs which comprise the album have since their release been heralded as the very greatest achievement of Chagall’s entire graphic oeuvre. In the introduction to the set in the Mourlot catalogue raisonné it is referred to as “the most important graphic work that Marc Chagall has created thus far.” It remains today the pinnacle of his work in this medium, the shimmering lithographs continue to be revered as amongst the masterprints of the mid-twentieth century. Each plate is in excellent condition, with bright fresh colors all printed to the edges on full sheets. Illustrating the text by Longus, published by Editions Verve, Paris, 1962.
The Daphnis and Chloe Suite, 1962
A complete album of 42 original lithographs printed in colors on Velin d’Arches wove paper. Each plate is a richly printed impression of the definitive state from the book edition of 250 apart from the deluxe edition of 60 numbered in Arabic numerals 1 to 60.
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Catalog Reference: Patrick Cramer, Marc Chagall - The Illustrated Books, Geneva, 1995, pp.154-162, no.46 (illustrated.)