About This Artwork

Marc Chagall
French, born Belarus, 1887-1985

The Actor, 1914

Pen and brush and black ink, over traces of graphite on tan wove paper, laid down on ivory wove card
165 x 133 mm (primary support); 178 x 141 mm (secondary support)
Signed recto, lower left, in pen and black ink: "Marc" and lower right: "Chagall"
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph R. Shapiro, 1992.205

© 2008 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Chicago, Renaissance Society, University of Chicago, "Marc Chagall: Paintings and Graphic Works," February 15–March 8, 1958, cat. 19, as The Actor, n.d.


Chicago, Arts Club, "Drawings 1916/1966," February 28–April 11, 1966, n.p., cat. 13, dated 1916.

Chicago, Spertus Museum of Judaica, "The French Connection: Jewish Artists in the School of Paris 1900–1940, Works in Chicago Collections," October 24–December 31, 1982, n.p., cat. 5 (ill.).

The Art Institute of Chicago, "An Irrational Act: Gifts of Surrealist Works on Paper from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Randall Shapiro," December 15, 1992-April 18, 1993, p. 8, fig. 6.

Publication History

Franz Meyer, Marc Chagall: Leben und Werk (Cologne, 1961), pp. 290 (ill.) and 744.

Jean Cassou, Chagall, trans. by Alisa Jaffa (New York, 1965), pp. 90–91 and 277, fig. 62,

Roy McMullin and Izis Bidermanas, The World of Marc Chagall (Garden City, NY, 1968), pp. 152 and 154 (ill.), dated 1916.

Ownership History

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph R. Shapiro, Chicago, probably by 1958 [Chicago 1958]; given to the Art Institute, 1992.