![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/French-artist-Marc-Chagall-1969.webp\")
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Early life and works<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nChagall was born in a small city in the western Russian Empire not far from the Polish frontier. His family, which included eight other children, was devoutly Jewish and, like the majority of the some 20,000 Jews in Vitebsk, humble without being poverty-stricken; his father worked in a herring warehouse, and his mother ran a shop where she sold fish, flour, sugar, and spices. The young Chagall attended<\/a> the heder (Jewish elementary school) and later went to the local public school, where instruction was in Russian. After learning the elements of drawing at school, he studied painting<\/a> in the studio of a local realist, Jehuda Pen, and in 1907 went to St. Petersburg<\/a>, where he studied intermittently for three years, eventually under the stage designer Leon Bakst. Characteristic works by Chagall from this period of early maturity are the nightmarish The Dead Man<\/em> (1908), which depicts a roof violinist (a favourite motif), and My Fianc\u00e9e with Black Gloves<\/em> (1909), in which a portrait becomes an occasion for the artist to experiment with arranging black and white.<\/p>\n\n\n\nMaturity<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe four years of his first stay in the French capital are often considered Chagall\u2019s best phase. Representative works are Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers<\/em> (1912), I and the Village<\/em> (1911), Hommage \u00e0 Apollinaire<\/em> (1911\u201312), Calvary<\/em> (1912), The Fiddler<\/em> (1912), and Paris Through the Window<\/em> (1913). In these pictures Chagall was already essentially the artist he would continue to be for the next 60 years. His colours, although occasionally thin, were beginning to show the characteristic complexity and resonance<\/a> he would eventually achieve. The often whimsical figurative elements, frequently upside down, are distributed on the canvas in an arbitrary fashion, producing an effect that sometimes resembles a film montage and suggests the inner space of a reverie. The general atmosphere of these works can imply a Yiddish joke, a Russian fairy tale<\/a>, or a vaudeville turn. Often the principal character is the romantically handsome, curly-haired young painter himself. Memories of childhood and of Vitebsk were major sources of imagery for Chagall during this period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter exhibiting in the annual Paris Salon des Ind\u00e9pendants<\/a> and Salon d\u2019Automne<\/a>, Chagall had his first solo show in Berlin in 1914, in the gallery of the Modernist<\/a> publication Der Sturm<\/a>, and he made a strong impression on German Expressionist<\/a> circles. After visiting the exhibition, he went on to Vitebsk, where he was stranded by the outbreak of World War I<\/a>. Working for the moment in a relatively realistic style<\/a>, Chagall painted local scenes and a series of studies of old men; examples of the series are The Praying Jew<\/em> (or The Rabbi of Vitebsk<\/em>, 1914) and Jew in Green<\/em> (1914). In 1915 he married Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of a wealthy Vitebsk merchant; among the many paintings in which she appears from this date onward are the depiction of flying lovers entitled Birthday<\/em> (1915\u201323) and the high-spirited, acrobatic Double Portrait with a Glass of Wine<\/em> (1917).<\/p>\n\n\n\nChagall was initially enthusiastic about the Russian Revolution<\/a> of October 1917; he became commissar for art in the Vitebsk region and launched into ambitious projects for a local art academy<\/a> and museum. But after two and a half years of intense activity, marked by increasingly bitter aesthetic<\/a> and political quarrels with the faculty of the art academy, he gave up and moved to Moscow. There he turned his attention for a while to the stage, producing the sets and costumes for plays by the Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem<\/a> and murals for the Kamerny Theatre<\/em>. In 1922 Chagall left Russia for good, going first to Berlin, where he discovered that a large number of the pictures he had left behind in 1914 had disappeared. In 1923, this time with a wife and daughter, he settled once again in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/Chagals-2.jpeg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nChagall's Artiste au Chevalet <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n(c) Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Chagall had learned the techniques of engraving<\/a> while in Berlin. Through his friend Cendrars he met the Paris art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard<\/a>, who in 1923 commissioned him to create a series of etchings<\/a> to illustrate a special edition of Nikolay Gogol<\/a>\u2019s novel Dead Souls<\/a>, and thus launched Chagall on a long career as a printmaker<\/a>. During the next three years, Chagall executed 107 full-page plates for the Gogol book. By then Vollard had a new idea: an edition of French poet Jean de La Fontaine<\/a>\u2019s Fables<\/a>, with coloured illustrations resembling 18th-century prints. Chagall prepared 100 gouaches<\/a> for reproduction, but it soon became evident that his colours were too complex for the printing<\/a> process envisaged<\/a>. He switched to black-and-white etchings, completing the plates in 1931. By this time Vollard had come up with still another commission: a series of etchings illustrating the Bible<\/a>. Chagall had completed 66 plates by 1939, when World War II<\/a> and the death of Vollard halted work on the project; with the project renewed in the postwar years, Chagall eventually completed 105 plates. The Paris publisher E. T\u00e9riade, picking up where Vollard had left off, issued Dead Souls in 1948 (with 11 more etchings for the chapter headings, making 118 in all), La Fontaine\u2019s<\/a> Fables in 1952 (with two cover etchings, making 102 in all), and the Bible in 1956. Along with these much delayed<\/a> ventures, in the 1920s Chagall also produced a number of smaller collections of engravings, many single plates, and an impressive quantity of coloured lithographs and monotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDuring the 1920s and early \u201930s, Chagall painted fewer large canvases, and his work became more obviously poetical and popular with the general public. Examples are Bride and Groom with Eiffel Tower (1928) and The Circus (1931). With Hitler\u2019s rise to power, however, and the growing threat of a new world conflict, the artist began to have visions of a very different sort, which are reflected in the powerful White Crucifixion (1938). In this painting, Jewish and Christian symbols are conflated<\/a> in a depiction of German Jews terrorized by a Nazi mob; the crucified Christ at the center of the composition<\/a> is wrapped in a tallith, a Jewish prayer shawl<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nChagall\u2019s repertory of images, including massive bouquets, melancholy<\/a> clowns, flying lovers, fantastic animals, biblical prophets, and fiddlers on roofs, helped to make him one of the most popular major innovators of the 20th-century School of Paris. He presented dreamlike subject matter in rich colours and in a fluent, painterly style that\u2014while reflecting an awareness of artistic movements such as Expressionism<\/a>, Cubism<\/a>, and even abstraction\u2014remained invariably personal. Although critics sometimes complained of facile<\/a> sentiments<\/a>, uneven quality, and an excessive repetition of motifs in the artist\u2019s large total output, there is agreement that at its best it reached a level of visual metaphor<\/a> seldom attempted in modern art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mark-Chagall-3.png\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nI thank the Britannica Biography from which most of this article was taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a West Sussex version of Chagall's work in the window in Chichester Cathedral where the design is based on the 150th psalm<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.shavuatov.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mark-Chagalls-window-in-Chichester.jpg\")
Chichester Cathedral: the famous stained glass window designed by Marc Chagall and made by Charles Marq<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Maturity<\/strong><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\nThe four years of his first stay in the French capital are often considered Chagall\u2019s best phase. Representative works are Self-Portrait with Seven Fingers<\/em> (1912), I and the Village<\/em> (1911), Hommage \u00e0 Apollinaire<\/em> (1911\u201312), Calvary<\/em> (1912), The Fiddler<\/em> (1912), and Paris Through the Window<\/em> (1913). In these pictures Chagall was already essentially the artist he would continue to be for the next 60 years. His colours, although occasionally thin, were beginning to show the characteristic complexity and resonance<\/a> he would eventually achieve. The often whimsical figurative elements, frequently upside down, are distributed on the canvas in an arbitrary fashion, producing an effect that sometimes resembles a film montage and suggests the inner space of a reverie. The general atmosphere of these works can imply a Yiddish joke, a Russian fairy tale<\/a>, or a vaudeville turn. Often the principal character is the romantically handsome, curly-haired young painter himself. Memories of childhood and of Vitebsk were major sources of imagery for Chagall during this period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nAfter exhibiting in the annual Paris Salon des Ind\u00e9pendants<\/a> and Salon d\u2019Automne<\/a>, Chagall had his first solo show in Berlin in 1914, in the gallery of the Modernist<\/a> publication Der Sturm<\/a>, and he made a strong impression on German Expressionist<\/a> circles. After visiting the exhibition, he went on to Vitebsk, where he was stranded by the outbreak of World War I<\/a>. Working for the moment in a relatively realistic style<\/a>, Chagall painted local scenes and a series of studies of old men; examples of the series are The Praying Jew<\/em> (or The Rabbi of Vitebsk<\/em>, 1914) and Jew in Green<\/em> (1914). In 1915 he married Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of a wealthy Vitebsk merchant; among the many paintings in which she appears from this date onward are the depiction of flying lovers entitled Birthday<\/em> (1915\u201323) and the high-spirited, acrobatic Double Portrait with a Glass of Wine<\/em> (1917).<\/p>\n\n\n\nChagall was initially enthusiastic about the Russian Revolution<\/a> of October 1917; he became commissar for art in the Vitebsk region and launched into ambitious projects for a local art academy<\/a> and museum. But after two and a half years of intense activity, marked by increasingly bitter aesthetic<\/a> and political quarrels with the faculty of the art academy, he gave up and moved to Moscow. There he turned his attention for a while to the stage, producing the sets and costumes for plays by the Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem<\/a> and murals for the Kamerny Theatre<\/em>. In 1922 Chagall left Russia for good, going first to Berlin, where he discovered that a large number of the pictures he had left behind in 1914 had disappeared. In 1923, this time with a wife and daughter, he settled once again in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nChagall's Artiste au Chevalet <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n(c) Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Chagall had learned the techniques of engraving<\/a> while in Berlin. Through his friend Cendrars he met the Paris art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard<\/a>, who in 1923 commissioned him to create a series of etchings<\/a> to illustrate a special edition of Nikolay Gogol<\/a>\u2019s novel Dead Souls<\/a>, and thus launched Chagall on a long career as a printmaker<\/a>. During the next three years, Chagall executed 107 full-page plates for the Gogol book. By then Vollard had a new idea: an edition of French poet Jean de La Fontaine<\/a>\u2019s Fables<\/a>, with coloured illustrations resembling 18th-century prints. Chagall prepared 100 gouaches<\/a> for reproduction, but it soon became evident that his colours were too complex for the printing<\/a> process envisaged<\/a>. He switched to black-and-white etchings, completing the plates in 1931. By this time Vollard had come up with still another commission: a series of etchings illustrating the Bible<\/a>. Chagall had completed 66 plates by 1939, when World War II<\/a> and the death of Vollard halted work on the project; with the project renewed in the postwar years, Chagall eventually completed 105 plates. The Paris publisher E. T\u00e9riade, picking up where Vollard had left off, issued Dead Souls in 1948 (with 11 more etchings for the chapter headings, making 118 in all), La Fontaine\u2019s<\/a> Fables in 1952 (with two cover etchings, making 102 in all), and the Bible in 1956. Along with these much delayed<\/a> ventures, in the 1920s Chagall also produced a number of smaller collections of engravings, many single plates, and an impressive quantity of coloured lithographs and monotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\nDuring the 1920s and early \u201930s, Chagall painted fewer large canvases, and his work became more obviously poetical and popular with the general public. Examples are Bride and Groom with Eiffel Tower (1928) and The Circus (1931). With Hitler\u2019s rise to power, however, and the growing threat of a new world conflict, the artist began to have visions of a very different sort, which are reflected in the powerful White Crucifixion (1938). In this painting, Jewish and Christian symbols are conflated<\/a> in a depiction of German Jews terrorized by a Nazi mob; the crucified Christ at the center of the composition<\/a> is wrapped in a tallith, a Jewish prayer shawl<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nChagall\u2019s repertory of images, including massive bouquets, melancholy<\/a> clowns, flying lovers, fantastic animals, biblical prophets, and fiddlers on roofs, helped to make him one of the most popular major innovators of the 20th-century School of Paris. He presented dreamlike subject matter in rich colours and in a fluent, painterly style that\u2014while reflecting an awareness of artistic movements such as Expressionism<\/a>, Cubism<\/a>, and even abstraction\u2014remained invariably personal. Although critics sometimes complained of facile<\/a> sentiments<\/a>, uneven quality, and an excessive repetition of motifs in the artist\u2019s large total output, there is agreement that at its best it reached a level of visual metaphor<\/a> seldom attempted in modern art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nI thank the Britannica Biography from which most of this article was taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a West Sussex version of Chagall's work in the window in Chichester Cathedral where the design is based on the 150th psalm<\/p>\n\n\n\nChichester Cathedral: the famous stained glass window designed by Marc Chagall and made by Charles Marq<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n After exhibiting in the annual Paris Salon des Ind\u00e9pendants<\/a> and Salon d\u2019Automne<\/a>, Chagall had his first solo show in Berlin in 1914, in the gallery of the Modernist<\/a> publication Der Sturm<\/a>, and he made a strong impression on German Expressionist<\/a> circles. After visiting the exhibition, he went on to Vitebsk, where he was stranded by the outbreak of World War I<\/a>. Working for the moment in a relatively realistic style<\/a>, Chagall painted local scenes and a series of studies of old men; examples of the series are The Praying Jew<\/em> (or The Rabbi of Vitebsk<\/em>, 1914) and Jew in Green<\/em> (1914). In 1915 he married Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of a wealthy Vitebsk merchant; among the many paintings in which she appears from this date onward are the depiction of flying lovers entitled Birthday<\/em> (1915\u201323) and the high-spirited, acrobatic Double Portrait with a Glass of Wine<\/em> (1917).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chagall was initially enthusiastic about the Russian Revolution<\/a> of October 1917; he became commissar for art in the Vitebsk region and launched into ambitious projects for a local art academy<\/a> and museum. But after two and a half years of intense activity, marked by increasingly bitter aesthetic<\/a> and political quarrels with the faculty of the art academy, he gave up and moved to Moscow. There he turned his attention for a while to the stage, producing the sets and costumes for plays by the Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem<\/a> and murals for the Kamerny Theatre<\/em>. In 1922 Chagall left Russia for good, going first to Berlin, where he discovered that a large number of the pictures he had left behind in 1914 had disappeared. In 1923, this time with a wife and daughter, he settled once again in Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n Chagall's Artiste au Chevalet <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n (c) Getty Images<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Chagall had learned the techniques of engraving<\/a> while in Berlin. Through his friend Cendrars he met the Paris art dealer and publisher Ambroise Vollard<\/a>, who in 1923 commissioned him to create a series of etchings<\/a> to illustrate a special edition of Nikolay Gogol<\/a>\u2019s novel Dead Souls<\/a>, and thus launched Chagall on a long career as a printmaker<\/a>. During the next three years, Chagall executed 107 full-page plates for the Gogol book. By then Vollard had a new idea: an edition of French poet Jean de La Fontaine<\/a>\u2019s Fables<\/a>, with coloured illustrations resembling 18th-century prints. Chagall prepared 100 gouaches<\/a> for reproduction, but it soon became evident that his colours were too complex for the printing<\/a> process envisaged<\/a>. He switched to black-and-white etchings, completing the plates in 1931. By this time Vollard had come up with still another commission: a series of etchings illustrating the Bible<\/a>. Chagall had completed 66 plates by 1939, when World War II<\/a> and the death of Vollard halted work on the project; with the project renewed in the postwar years, Chagall eventually completed 105 plates. The Paris publisher E. T\u00e9riade, picking up where Vollard had left off, issued Dead Souls in 1948 (with 11 more etchings for the chapter headings, making 118 in all), La Fontaine\u2019s<\/a> Fables in 1952 (with two cover etchings, making 102 in all), and the Bible in 1956. Along with these much delayed<\/a> ventures, in the 1920s Chagall also produced a number of smaller collections of engravings, many single plates, and an impressive quantity of coloured lithographs and monotypes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the 1920s and early \u201930s, Chagall painted fewer large canvases, and his work became more obviously poetical and popular with the general public. Examples are Bride and Groom with Eiffel Tower (1928) and The Circus (1931). With Hitler\u2019s rise to power, however, and the growing threat of a new world conflict, the artist began to have visions of a very different sort, which are reflected in the powerful White Crucifixion (1938). In this painting, Jewish and Christian symbols are conflated<\/a> in a depiction of German Jews terrorized by a Nazi mob; the crucified Christ at the center of the composition<\/a> is wrapped in a tallith, a Jewish prayer shawl<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Chagall\u2019s repertory of images, including massive bouquets, melancholy<\/a> clowns, flying lovers, fantastic animals, biblical prophets, and fiddlers on roofs, helped to make him one of the most popular major innovators of the 20th-century School of Paris. He presented dreamlike subject matter in rich colours and in a fluent, painterly style that\u2014while reflecting an awareness of artistic movements such as Expressionism<\/a>, Cubism<\/a>, and even abstraction\u2014remained invariably personal. Although critics sometimes complained of facile<\/a> sentiments<\/a>, uneven quality, and an excessive repetition of motifs in the artist\u2019s large total output, there is agreement that at its best it reached a level of visual metaphor<\/a> seldom attempted in modern art.<\/p>\n\n\n I thank the Britannica Biography from which most of this article was taken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a West Sussex version of Chagall's work in the window in Chichester Cathedral where the design is based on the 150th psalm<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n