Saül consultando la magicienne

Saül consultando la magicienne (1958–1959) belongs to Marc Chagall’s sustained engagement with biblical subject matter, a vein of work that occupied him with particular intensity through the late 1950s. Executed in charcoal and pencil on paper, the drawing shows the artist working directly, with the figures emerging from dense, worked passages of shadow rather than from contour alone.

The subject is drawn from the First Book of Samuel: Saul, on the eve of battle and abandoned by divine counsel, seeks out the witch of Endor to summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel. It is an episode of transgression and foreboding, and Chagall renders it without theatrical staging — the figures float in an ambiguous space, weightless and closely bound.

Drawing as Vision

The sheet is organised as a constellation rather than a scene. A veiled female figure dominates the upper register, a bearded elder observes from the right, and a further pair occupies the lower half, their faces turned toward one another. Rather than fixing the narrative in a single moment, Chagall lets the figures coexist in the manner of a vision or a remembered dream.

The charcoal is applied in accumulated layers, smudged and reworked, while the pencil recovers definition in the faces and hands. This tension between the dissolved and the precise is characteristic of Chagall’s graphic work of the period, in which drawing served not as preparation but as an autonomous form of thought.

The Biblical Cycle

The late 1950s coincide with Chagall’s work towards the Message Biblique, the extended cycle of paintings and works on paper that would eventually be housed in Nice. Sheets such as this one belong to the exploratory territory around that project, where the artist tested compositions, gestures and figure groupings before committing them to canvas.

The subject of prophecy and the summoning of the dead held a particular resonance for Chagall, whose imagery consistently moved between the earthly and the visionary, the remembered and the imagined.

Provenance & Documentation

Signed lower right.

Provenance: Private Collection Certificate: Comité Chagall Reference: MC-GRO-01