7 July: Marc Chagall

The artist Marc Chagall was born on this date in 1887. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born in the current day country of Belarus, the eldest of nine children. His father worked in a herring warehouse and his mother ran a grocery shop. On the day he was born his village was attacked by the Cossacks. In the first moments after his birth, he was unresponsive and had to be pricked with needles and dunked in cold water to make him cry. He was given the name Movcha, or Moses.
2. His family were Hasidic Jews, who believed it was forbidden to make representations of God's creation, so as Chagall grew up, there was no art or creativity in his home. It wasn't until a school friend showed him a drawing that he saw any art, and was immediately entranced by it. He asked his friend how he'd learned to draw. His friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it". Chagall did exactly that, and the rest, as they say, is history.
3. Needless to say, his decision to become a painter wasn't met with great enthusiasm by his family. As well as the religious rules, as the eldest child he was expected to help out in the shop. His mother relented eventually and let him go to a local art school. One of his uncles, however, was so furious about him painting figures that he refused to shake his hand.
4. In the Russian Empire at the time, Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular schools, so Chagall's early education was at a Jewish school, but later his mother bribed the headmaster of the local high school so he could attend there.
5. At 19, he left his home town of Vitebsk for St. Petersburg where he attended the Imperial Society for the Protection of Fine Arts. He didn't have an easy time of it there. He had no money and would sometimes collapse from hunger. He didn't like studying classical art, and at one point spent a week in prison for the crime of being a Jew in the city without a special permit. Chagall enjoyed his time in prison because there, he could paint in peace. And presumably got regular meals as well.
6. By the age of 24, Chagall had found a patron willing to pay him an allowance which enabled him to move to Paris. Even so the allowance wasn't much so he had to live on half a herring a day. New clothes were out of the question, so he would paint naked so as not to ruin his clothes by getting paint on them. Despite all this, Chagall loved Paris.
7. In 1915 he married Bella Rosenfeld, the daughter of the wealthiest family in his hometown. She was his muse, often appearing in his paintings. When she died in 1944, Chagall plunged into a deep depression and didn't paint for months, until his daughter persuaded him to go back to it.
8. Needless to say, Paris became an unsafe place for a Jewish artist come the 1930s. Alfred H. Barr, Jr., the director of the Museum of Modern Art, made sure Chagall's name was on a list of European artists who needed asylum from Nazi persecution which meant he could relocate to New York with his family in 1941. He lived there for six years but never really settled. He was homesick for Paris and never bothered to learn English. “It took me thirty years to learn bad French, why should I try to learn English?” he said. His art became much darker during this time. Bella's death no doubt contributed to this. He eventually returned to Paris where he painted the ceiling of the Opéra Garnier in Paris at the age of 77. The painting features fourteen significant Opera composers and their work.
9. He wasn't just a painter. He also designed tapestries, ceramics, theatre sets, costumes and stained glass windows. His stained glass windows can be seen today in New York, France and Jerusalem.
10. He was also very shy. As a child he had a stutter and was prone to fainting, which he later explained as a fear of growing up. Even when he was a famous artist he shunned the spotlight. When people asked if he was the artist Marc Chagall, he would often deny it, and would point at someone else and say “Maybe that’s him.”

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