On the Road to Sobakévitch (En Route vers Sobakévitch), plate XIII (supplementary suite) from Les Âmes mortes

On the Road to Sobakévitch (En Route vers Sobakévitch), plate XIII (supplementary suite) from Les Âmes mortes is an etching created by Marc Chagall in 1923. This powerful print is one of 96 illustrations Chagall executed for a deluxe French edition of Nikolai Gogol’s classic satirical novel, Dead Souls. Commissioned by the legendary art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard, the project required Chagall to translate the grim, often absurd atmosphere of Gogol's 19th-century Russia into a stark, modernist visual language.

The choice of etching as a medium was crucial, allowing Chagall to utilize deep black lines and dramatic contrasts perfectly suited to the novel's dark realism and spiritual emptiness. Although the suite was largely completed in the early 1920s, the full volume was not finally published until 1948, classifying the overall period of the work’s documentation as 1923-48. Chagall’s compositions are dynamic and dreamlike, using white space and heavy delineation to emphasize the psychological weight carried by the protagonist, Chichikov, on his bizarre mission to acquire "dead souls."

Plate On the Road to Sobakévitch specifically illustrates the unsettling journey toward one of the landowners, Sobakévitch, who represents the novel's most overtly coarse and greedy characters. This piece demonstrates Chagall’s mastery of French graphic arts and his ability to fuse Russian literary tradition with early 20th-century European abstraction. The work exists as a vital component of the graphic arts catalog at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Researchers frequently study prints of this period to understand the evolving role of the artist-illustrator, especially as these masterworks transition into the public domain.