Orpheus, home of John and Evelyn Nef, Washington, DC

On November 27, 2013, Marc Chagall's mosaic Orpheus was unveiled at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Evelyn Stefansson Nef (1913-2009) had bequeathed¹ the monumental work to the National Gallery in 2009² before it was restored and installed in the northwestern part of the Sculpture Garden. “The gallery is delighted to share Evelyn and John Nef’s most precious possession, exactly like she wanted to³,” said National Gallery of Art Director Earl A. Powell III.

Chagall designed the Orpheus mosaic specially for the home of two American friends, Evelyn and John Nef⁴. For nearly 40 years, this work graced a wall in the garden of their Georgetown, Washington, D.C. home in the shadow of a tall magnolia tree. In late autumn 1968, Chagall and his wife Valentina visited the couple at their home in Georgetown. To the Nefs' great surprise, Chagall himself first mentioned the idea of “doing something” for their home. “Near the end of his visit,” they recalled, “at breakfast Marc said, ‘Nothing for the house. The house is perfect as it is. But I do want to do something for the garden. A mosaic.⁵’” Several months later, while the Nefs were on vacation in France, Chagall invited them to lunch at Saint-Paul-de-Vence and unveiled the color model of the future mosaic for the first time.

Chagall chose the Orpheus theme instead of the ideas the Nefs had suggested⁶ as the mosaic’s possible sources of inspiration. John Nef told a story about this dating back to the late summer of 1968, when he and his wife were staying at the same hotel as the Chagalls in Cap-d'Antibes. He recalled an evening when a friend of the American couple’s, flutist Elaine Shaffer, played music from Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice (1762)⁷. As a music-lover, Chagall may have drawn inspiration from this evening with the Nefs to develop the mosaic’s content⁸. The first time the artist addressed the theme of Orpheus⁹ was during his earliest visit to Paris, when he produced a picture with shimmering colors and a slightly geometric treatment of the mythological character's body, which takes up a large part of the painting’s surface¹⁰. Orpheus reappeared some 40 years later in Chagall’s painting on the ceiling of the Paris opera house (1964), which depicts a pantheon of illustrious composers. A scene based on Gluck’s opera Orpheus and Eurydice is among the four themes in the central circle. On a predominantly green background, Eurydice plays the lyre, Orpheus' instrument, as the angel hands her flowers. After the edifying experience of the opera house, the mosaic offered the artist a monumental dimension for the narrative, allowing him to depict the myth of Orpheus in a new light.

In his first American mosaic, Chagall deviated from the abundant iconography surrounding the character of Orpheus. On the left-hand side, a group of people huddling together wait to cross a large body of blue water. For Chagall, this scene alluded to the immigrants and refugees who crossed the ocean to reach America, but also to his own past. Aided by the International Rescue Committee, and encouraged by Varian Fry and Hiram Bingham, Chagall fled Nazi-occupied France for the United States, where he lived from 1941 to 1948. Probably drawing inspiration from Orpheus's role in the Argonauts' voyage, Chagall breathed an idea of hope and humanism into the work while expressing his gratitude¹¹ to the United States for welcoming him and other refugees. A poet and musician, Orpheus took part in the Argonauts' expedition, using his art in the face of danger as a guardian and talisman for the crew. The music from his lyre set the rowers’ pace on the Argo, while his singing cast a spell on the sirens and the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece, a symbol of the sun. On the right-hand side of Chagall's mosaic, Orpheus floats above the sea’s blue waves as the three Graces and the winged horse, Pegasus, dance to his lyre’s music. Behind him, the viewer can make out the hoped-for land with a few houses and, in the lower right-hand corner, a peaceful green garden with animals and two lovers resting under a tree. A huge yellow sun spreads its warm rays, a multitude of skillfully distributed multi-colored stone and glass shards making the air vibrate and the waves sparkle.

Composed of ten panels, the mosaic was created by Lino Melano in his workshop in Biot in the South of France. In a letter to Valentina and Marc Chagall dated December 5, 1969, the Italian mosaicist asked for the wall’s exact dimensions and announced the price of the work: 1,500 francs per square meter, excluding travel expenses. The Nefs paid all the costs related to producing and installing the mosaic. The actual work of art, however, was a gift from Chagall to his friends and therefore free. Melano began working on the mosaic in 1970 and finished it in June 1971¹². It was interrupted for several months in 1970 due to some health issues that required him to stay in hospital¹³. Born in Ravenna, the world’s mosaic capital since Antiquity, Melano used marble, colored stones, Venetian glass and other materials. He often bought his supplies from Albertini’s, near Paris, or Orsoni’s, in the Cannaregio district of Venice. The mosaicist rejected the use of ceramics and smooth stones, preferring hand-cut, rough, multifaceted tesserae. Evelyn Nef said that each stone was set at a slightly different angle so that light, whether natural or artificial, was continuously captured, retained and released¹⁴. Melano arrived in Washington to mount the mosaic in October 1971, at the same time that the 10 panels of Orpheus were crossing the Atlantic. A wall¹⁵ adjoining the neighboring house was specially built for Chagall’s mosaic. Assisted by two workers and Evelyn Nef herself, Melano finished mounting the mosaic¹⁶, which was unveiled on November 1, 1971 with the artist in attendance.

Specialists from the National Gallery painstakingly removed the mosaic from the Nef’s garden wall and restored it. Today it is in the Sculpture Garden surrounded by greenery and works by Joan Miró, Louise Bourgeois, Tony Smith, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Mark di Suvero, Ellsworth Kelly and many others. A testimony to friendship, this “universal” mosaic, in John Nef’s words, is a “call to humanity to unite in hope and love¹⁷”. Chagall's first American mosaic was a token of friendship and gratitude to the United States. It also provided the impetus for his most monumental mosaic, The Four Seasons, First National Bank Plaza, Chicago [Les Quatre Saisons, First National Bank Plaza, Chicago] (1971 - 1974), designed for a public urban space: Chicago’s First National Bank Plaza¹⁸.