- Person
- Marc Chagall
- Lived
- 1887–1985
- Field
- Painting
- From
- Russian-French
The story
Even in extreme old age, Marc Chagall kept working on large public projects. Walter Hussey, Dean of Chichester Cathedral in West Sussex from 1955 to 1977, was a great patron of modern art and music for the church. In 1965 he had commissioned Leonard Bernstein's Chichester Psalms, and he wanted a window that would express the theme "The Arts to the Glory of God".
Hussey had been inspired by Chagall's windows for the Hadassah hospital synagogue in Jerusalem, which he saw in an exhibition at the Louvre, and by his windows for the village church at Tudeley in Kent. He first asked Chagall in 1969, but the artist was too busy. Hussey wrote again in 1975, and this time Chagall accepted.
Chagall, who was Jewish, saw Psalm 150 as a perfect expression of Hussey's theme. The psalm calls on everything that has breath to praise the Lord with trumpet, harp, strings and dance, and Chagall included every instrument it names: King David's harp at the top, strings at the lower left and a trumpet at the lower right. Musicians, animals, birds and two figures holding a seven-branched candlestick fill the glass. Unusually for Chagall, whose favourite colour was blue, the window is predominantly red, like his windows in Jerusalem.
Chagall designed it at the age of 90, and it was the last commissioned work of his life. It was made in the studio of his collaborator Charles Marq in Reims, then unveiled by the Duchess of Kent and dedicated by the Bishop of Chichester in October 1978. By then Hussey had retired as dean, but many regard the window as the crowning achievement of his years at Chichester.
The psalm's call for all living things to join in praise suited an artist who had always filled his pictures with fiddlers, animals and joyful movement. The window sits in the north quire aisle of the cathedral, and it is one of only two places in Britain with glass by Chagall, the other being the twelve windows of All Saints, Tudeley.
Why it matters
The Chichester window shows Chagall still bringing joy and colour to public spaces at the very end of a long life, and it remains a favourite of visitors to the cathedral.
About Marc Chagall
One of the 20th century's most beloved painters; pioneer of modernism rooted in Jewish folk life.
More about Marc Chagall
- Chagall's America Windows celebrate religious freedomMarc Chagall created the America Windows for the Art Institute of Chicago as a tribute to the US Bicentennial and America's commitment to cultural and religious freedom.
- Marc Chagall's twelve windows for a Jerusalem hospitalMarc Chagall spent two years creating twelve stained-glass windows of the tribes of Israel for the synagogue of Jerusalem's Hadassah Medical Center, installed in February 1962.
- Marc Chagall gave France his Biblical Message paintingsMarc Chagall donated 17 large paintings and 38 gouaches of his Biblical Message series to France, which built a national museum for them in Nice, opened on his birthday in 1973.
- Marc Chagall painted the ceiling of the Paris OperaOn 23 September 1964 Marc Chagall's new ceiling for the Paris Opera was unveiled: nearly 2,400 square feet of canvas paying tribute to great composers, dancers and actors.
- Marc Chagall filled every window of a Kent village churchAll Saints Church in Tudeley, Kent, is the only church in the world with all twelve of its windows by Marc Chagall, installed between 1967 and 1985.
- Marc Chagall founded an art school in his home townIn 1918, as commissar of arts for Vitebsk, Marc Chagall founded the city's People's Art College and an art museum, opening art education to ordinary people.
- Marc Chagall made the Peace window at the United NationsIn 1964 Marc Chagall created Peace, a stained-glass window at the United Nations in New York honouring Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, who died on a peace mission in 1961.
- Chagall's Mainz windows became a sign of reconciliationFrom 1978, aged 91, Marc Chagall created windows for St Stephan's church in Mainz as a sign of Jewish-Christian friendship, in a city once called the capital of European Jewry.
- Marc Chagall painted murals for Moscow's Jewish theatreFor the 1921 opening of Moscow's State Jewish Chamber Theatre, Marc Chagall painted huge murals of dancers, fiddlers and acrobats that became a landmark in theatre history.
- Marc Chagall preserved a vanished Jewish world in paintMarc Chagall's paintings of Vitebsk, its fiddlers, rabbis and wooden houses, became the most important visual record of East European Jewish life, and inspired Fiddler on the Roof.
Sources
- Marc Chagall Wikipedia
- Delve Deeper: Marc Chagall Window Chichester Cathedral
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