Guest Blog

Marc Chagall and the
Bible Lithographs

When do you start investing in art and will the market always go up? Yes, if you buy the best, then your investment will always be secure.

Here is one of our sellers’ tales:

Many years ago in the late 1970’s when I was an extremely green novice in the art world, a friend asked me if I would be interested in acquiring a complete set of Marc Chagall’s Bible lithographs. This entailed traveling to Switzerland to meet a lawyer who would show us the prints in a bank vault. This seemed a lot of fun and the trip was arranged. The owner was a famous singer (still alive) who was considering selling.

I arrived at the lawyers office and were shown a magnificent bound set of the complete works. How much, I inquired? (thinking a few hundred pounds...) Twenty thousand pounds came the reply. Ah, I said. I will need to think about this over lunch.

I suddenly realized that in the art world how very easy it is to step out of your league. I declined the kind offer and came home much wiser and slightly poorer.

A few weeks ago out of the blue I was offered some individual lithos from the set published in the 1950’s. I had never bought or been offered any in the intervening 40 years and thought just how much had changed since that day in Switzerland all those years ago.

Recently, a complete set of Marc Chagall’s Bible lithographs fetched £60,000 so I would definitely have made a profit.

More on Marc Chagall's Bible lithographs


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