- Person
- Marc Chagall
- Lived
- 1887–1985
- Field
- Painting
- From
- Russian-French
The story
All Saints Church in the small Kent village of Tudeley is an ancient place of worship, listed in the Domesday Book of 1086, with a tower from 1765 and a nave rebuilt in the 1870s. On 19 September 1963 Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, aged 21, the daughter of Sir Henry and Lady Rosemary d'Avigdor-Goldsmid of nearby Somerhill House, drowned in a sailing accident off Rye. In her memory, her parents commissioned Marc Chagall to create a window for the church.
The east window was installed and dedicated in 1967. When Chagall came for the dedication and saw the church for the first time, he exclaimed in French: "C'est magnifique! Je les ferai tous!" It's magnificent, I will do them all.
Over the following years he designed the remaining eleven windows in watercolour, and they were made in collaboration with the glassmaker Charles Marq in his workshop in Reims, filling the little church with blue and golden light. Their images include Adam and Eve with the forbidden fruit, angels, a crescent moon, a white bird and, on the south side, scenes of resurrection. The windows of the north wall and two on the south were dedicated in 1974. The final four, in the chancel, were installed and dedicated in 1985, shortly before Chagall's death at the age of 97.
All Saints, Tudeley, is the only church in the world with all twelve of its windows decorated by Chagall. The only other religious buildings with complete sets of his windows are the Hadassah Medical Center synagogue in Jerusalem, the Chapel of Le Saillant in France and the Union Church of Pocantico Hills in New York. Together with the window at Chichester Cathedral, Tudeley holds the only Chagall glass in Britain.
The village church draws visitors from around the world. A family's private grief became, through Chagall's generosity, a place of light and consolation open to everyone who comes to sit among the windows.
Why it matters
Chagall turned a family's grief into a place of light and consolation that visitors of all backgrounds come to experience.
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 designed a cathedral window at the age of 90Marc Chagall designed a stained-glass window for Chichester Cathedral at the age of 90, inspired by Psalm 150, and it was unveiled by the Duchess of Kent in 1978.
- 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 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
- All Saints' Church, Tudeley Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.