c. 1917

Peasant Eating

Though published by Der Sturm Gallery in 1917, this print was made from earlier drawings that Chagall had executed in Paris during the height of his engagement with Cubism. Herwarth Walden, the owner of Der Sturm Gallery, was a great admirer of Chagall and organized a major exhibition of the artist’s work in 1914. In this image, a Cubist-rendered man eats from a bowl marked with the Hebrew word kosher, signifying that the food conforms to Jewish dietary law. This complicates the figure’s identification as a peasant, since few Jews worked in agriculture because of restrictions on owning land; this suggests that it was Walden, not Chagall, who titled the print.