About This Artwork

Marc Chagall
French, born Vitebsk, Russia (present-day Belarus), 1887–1985

The Circus Rider, c. 1927

Oil on canvas
9 3/8 x 7 7/16 in. (23.8 x 18.9 cm)
Signed, l.r.: "ChAgAll"
Gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman, 1949.516

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

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Basel, Kunsthalle, Marc Chagall, November 4–December 3, 1933, no. 92, as L’écuyère, 1932–1933.

Chicago, Arts Club, Marc Chagall, January 2–31, 1945, no. 36.

Sarasota, Fla., John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, The Circus in Art, January 20–March 6, 1977, n.p. (ill.); traveled to Gainesville, University of Florida Gallery, March 20–April 20, 1977.

Art Institute of Chicago, Poetics of Scale: Small-Sized Works from the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, June 3–August 24, 2003, no. 8.

Publication History

Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 74.

A. James Speyer and Courtney Graham Donnell, Twentieth-Century European Paintings (Chicago, 1980), p. 36, no. 1D2.

Sadye Tune Wilson, Else Regensteiner: Biography of a Weaver (Nashville, Tenn., 1997), p. 101 (ill.).

Jacob Baal-Teshuva, Marc Chagall (New York, 1998), p. 133 (ill.).

Ownership History

Marc Chagall, from c. 1927 to January 18, 1934 [letter to the artist from Kunsthalle Basel, January 18, 1934, in curatorial file]. Roullier Gallery, Chicago, by 1936 [letter from Mrs. Gilbert Chapman (formerly Mrs. Charles B. Goodspeed), November 27, 1974, in curatorial file]; sold to Mrs. Charles B. Goodspeed (died 1979), Chicago, from 1936 to 1949 [letter cited above]; gift to Art Institute, 1949.