The Chagall Windows

The Chagall windows at Tudeley were commissioned by Sir Henry and Lady d'Avigdor-Goldsmid in memory of Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid, their daughter who died in 1963 at the tragically early age of 21, in a sailing accident off Rye. Sarah d'Avigdor-Goldsmid and her mother had visited the 1961 Louvre exhibition of Chagall's work. The centrepiece of the exhibition was the windows designed for the synagogue of the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel. It was the memory of her daughter's love of these windows that led Sir Henry and Lady d'Avigdor-Goldsmid to commission Chagall to design windows for All Saints Tudeley.

Russian born in modern-day Belarus, Marc Chagall (1887-1985, French) was a pioneer of modernism and is considered to be one of the greatest figurative artists of the 20th century. Over the course of a long career, Chagall’s unique personal style was informed by his experience and memories of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. In Paris, as part of the Montparnasse circle, ‘he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism.’ Yet throughout these phases of his style ‘he remained most emphatically a Jewish artist, whose work was one long dreamy reverie of life in his native village of Vitebsk.’ During his career, Chagall did accept many non-Jewish commissions, including stained glass windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, the Dag Hammarskjold memorial at the United Nations, the great ceiling mural in the Paris Opera and the ceiling of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.