Marc Chagall, Over the Town, 1918
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Over the Town shows Chagall and his wife, Bella Rosenfeld Chagall, flying above Vitebsk,
which is a small town where he grew up. Over the Town is a celebration of their love and
how they became unified as a couple once married.
That’s how Chagall’s fiance,
Bella Goldenberg, remembered the elation of their engagement:
.
“I suddenly felt as if we were taking off. You too were poised on one leg, as if the little
room could no longer contain you. You soar up to the ceiling. Your head turned down
to me, and turned mine up to you… We flew over fields of flowers, shuttered houses,
roofs, yards, churches.”
Marc and Bella Chagall, 1920
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They fell for each other in 1909 in Saint Petersburg. Bella Rosenfeld, who was a
19-years-old daughter of a wealthy Russian jeweller, and Marc, seven years her
senior, a painter still attending an art school.
They both said it was love at the first sight. Bella, who was to become
a talented writer, described how Marc looked on their first encounter:
.
“When you did catch a glimpse of his eyes, they were as blue as if they’d fallen
straight out of the sky. They were strange eyes … long, almond-shaped …
and each seemed to sail along by itself, like a little boat.”
Marc Chagall, The Promenade, 1918
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Marc Chagall wrote about this meeting in My Life, his autobiography:
“Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about
my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me.”
Marc Chagall, Study for ‘The Birthday’, 1915
Marc Chagall, Birthday. 1915
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In 1911, Marc left for Paris to study art from the leading artists of his day leaving Bella
in Russia. However, he didn’t speak French and the beginnings were very tough as he
.
“felt like fleeing back to Russia, as he daydreamed while he painted, about the riches
of Russian folklore, his Hasidic experiences, his family, and especially Bella”.
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He stayed in Paris until 1914 when he couldn’t last any longer without his fiancée,
who was still in Vitebsk. He thought about her day and night, writes Baal-Teshuva,
the artist’s biographer. Chagall, afraid of losing Bella, accepted an invitation from an
art dealer in Berlin to exhibit his work because he wanted to later continue on to
Belarus and marry Bella, and then return with her to Paris.
Marc Chagall and his wife Bella Rosenfeld in his workshop in Paris, 1926
