A Story of Marriage and Love in Pictures: Marc Chagall and Bella Rosenfeld

And you became my wife

For the years to come. Dearest.

You gave me our daughter, a rare gift

on the most solemn day...

Thank you, O God on high

For the day and for the month.

 

Marc Chagall

 

He portrays his wife as an imaginative, intellectual, assertive woman: "With whom can I compare her? She was like no other. She was Bashenka-Belochka on the hill, reflected in the river Dvina with its clouds, trees and houses. I wanted to wake up inside my own daydream." Her voice was, as he put it, "like the song of a bird from another world."

Two revolutions, two wars, poverty, frequent travels — Bella Rosenfeld, Marc Chagall's faithful muse and wife, was with him for almost 30 years. His angel, the symbol of love in all his paintings, gentle, clever, beautiful, Bella understood Chagall as no one else did and accepted him just as he was. Not a single painting was finished without her approval; the artist adored her, loved her as he loved no one else, to the end of his long life.

Could the daughter of jewellery merchants from Vitebsk, a girl from a respectable, wealthy Jewish family, find a worthy husband? Without doubt, she could, and even should. Bella fell in love with the poor artist Moisei Segal. She was in no hurry. She studied, wrote letters to her beloved, and waited for him finally to return to his native Vitebsk. She believed: he was the only one she needed, this "vivid young man, about 25 years old, with strangely wide-open eyes looking out from beneath his wild curls", and there would be no other.

Chagall was born on 7 July 1887, and Bella was born on 14 December 1889. Both grew up at the same time in Vitebsk, a city that Catherine II, in the 18th century, had designated for Jewish settlement. A city of dozens of Christian churches and synagogues, it gave refuge to thousands of Jews, who made up more than half of its population. In this city, which looked out from high banks over the swift Dvina, Yiddish was spoken, and on Saturdays the doors of offices and shops were closed. It was in such surroundings that Marc and Bella were born and grew up.

Little Moishe Segal lived in a poor part of the town that looked more like a village – there, among ramshackle wooden houses, hens and goats wandering freely through the street. The Rosenfelds were jewellery merchants: they lived in the centre, and kept a cow in a stable, which they always took with them to the countryside. Vitebsk was once a fairly large town, with several theatres, a municipal symphony orchestra and an art school.

Bella and Marc belonged to different classes, but both grew up in an atmosphere of family love and affection. Marc's mother, the young and energetic Feiga-Ita Segal, adored her firstborn, giving him all her love, which her composed and calm husband Khatskel did not show to the same extent. "A tendency to daydream – that I received from my mother," Chagall wrote to his sisters in 1912. With great attentiveness his mother spoiled her Moishe, blue-eyed, curly-haired, handsome, unwittingly setting him apart from her other nine children. This deep inner bond with his mother would remain with Chagall forever, and a deep "feminine" note would show itself in most of his paintings.

For him, his mother embodied energy and movement: "We are the same. Am I not myself? Who am I? I would like to say that my talent lies hidden somewhere in her, that I received everything through her, except her spirit. So many years have passed since she died! Where are you now, little mother? In heaven, or in the earth? I am here, far from you. I would be happier if I were closer to you; at least I would look at your gravestone, touch your stone. But my soul is full of thoughts of you, of me, and thought has turned into grief. I do not ask you to pray for me. You yourself know how much torment I have. Tell me, little mother, in that other world, in paradise, in the clouds, wherever you are, does my love bring you comfort? Can I put into words all the devotion and gentle tenderness I feel for you?".

His father embodies reflection and order: "Everything about him was sad and enigmatic to me. An unfathomable image. Always tired, worried; only his eyes shone gently with a bluish-grey glow. Your portrait might leave the impression of a candle that is, at the same time, going out and being lit. And its scent – the scent of a dream.".

The life of both families was centred on religious observance, customs, traditional dishes and Jewish festivals. Love for people and animals, song and dance, joy and prayer — all of this was present in the life of Jewish families, bringing man and nature into a state of inner harmony. Over the years Marc brought all of this into his paintings, and Bella into their family life.

At school, Chagall did well only in geometry and drawing. He began his art education at Yehuda Pen's Art School: "One fine day (and all days are fine), I went up to my mother while, holding the peel, she was putting bread into the oven, and taking her by the elbow, white with flour, I said to her:

- Mama… I would like to be a painter.

- It's settled, I cannot be a shop assistant, or a bookkeeper. Enough. It was not for nothing that I felt something was going to happen.

- You see, Mama, am I a man like other men?

- What am I capable of?

- I want to be a painter. Mama, save me. Come with me. Let's go, let's go! There is a place in the town; if they take me there and I finish my schooling, I will become a perfect artist. I would be so happy!

- What? A painter? You, why, you're mad! Let me put the bread in the oven; don't bother me. I have to bake the bread.

- Mama, I can't take it any more. Let's go!

- Leave me in peace!

In the end, it was decided. We will go to Mr Pen. And if he decides that I am talented, then we shall think about it. But if not…! I will be an artist anyway, I thought to myself, but at my own risk. (From the autobiography My Life)

The young Chagall quickly arrived at his own expressiveness and at the rich spirituality of the Jewish environment and way of life,  to a feeling that the world is deeper and richer than ordinary everyday life. In his mind there settled images of various Jews, festivities, children's games, family gatherings, the songs of rabbis, prayer, a grandfather sitting on top of a chimney seeking his own peace. All these details, recalling his childhood tied to Vitebsk, would be brought to life in his paintings. In the course of his many years of creative work he lived through wars and revolutions, and experienced the sufferings of flight and exile. All these states, grounded in real memory and experience, alternating from joy and happiness to sorrow and melancholy, were also reflected in his art. Of himself he says: "I was born between heaven and earth." Despite everything, he remained faithful to his own personal expression, to his complete freedom. In every painting his own figure as an artist is present. His art is his life. In his writings he said, among other things: "God, You who hide in the clouds, or behind the shoemaker's house, let me discover my soul, the wistful soul of a stammering boy, reveal to me my path. I do not want to be like everyone else; I want to see a new world." That world of his own, he created in his paintings.

Meanwhile, Bella diligently mastered French and German at the girls' gymnasium. This gave the young Jewish woman the opportunity to continue her studies in Moscow or St Petersburg. In 1907, Bella, together with her friend Tea Brakhman, enrolled at university and specialised in Russian literature, studying psychology and logic, and the history of philosophy. It was apparently then that Basia became Bella, Tauba Brakhman became Teya, and Moyshe Segal became Moses Chagall: at the turn of the century many young Jews tried to change their names to Russian ones, so as not to stand out. Thus Tauba became Bella, and Moyshe, Marc.

Bella's friend Tea Brakhman, the daughter of an apothecary from Vitebsk, had already met Chagall back in Vitebsk – when Chagall arrived in St Petersburg, discovering the riches of its museums and icon art, he spent time with Tea, who became his girlfriend and model.

Marc Chagall met his future wife in 1909, in Vitebsk, where he had come on a visit from St Petersburg. Their first meeting took place in the house of their mutual friend Teya Brakhman. Bella was 19 years old, he had just turned 22. Chagall himself described it in his book "My Life": "Someone rings. Who is it? It is a friend of Tea's. She comes in. Her voice rings out, chattering with Tea. I feel…What do I feel? The visit of this young, unknown girl. And her melodious voice, which seemed to come from another world, truly unsettles me. Who is she? Who is she? No, I want to go up to her, to draw close to her. For a moment she looked at me, and went out.

Tea and I go for a walk. On the bridge we meet her friend again. She is alone, quite alone. Suddenly I feel that now I ought not to be with Tea, but with her! She is silent, and so am I. Her silence is my silence. Her eyes, my eyes. It is as though she has known me for a long time, as though she knows the whole of my childhood, my present, my future; as though she has been watching over me, gazing into my soul, even though I am seeing her for the first time. I feel that it is she, my wife. Her white skin, her eyes. How large, round and black they are! They are my eyes, my soul. Tea now seemed to me uninteresting, a stranger. I had entered a new house; I was becoming an inseparable part of it."

"I do not dare raise my eyes and meet his gaze. His eyes are now greenish-grey, the colour of sky and water. I swim in them, as in a river," Bella wrote in her memoirs. Her description of their first meeting is like a Chagall painting in words: "When you looked into his eyes, they were blue, as though they had fallen straight from the sky. They were strange eyes… long, almond-shaped… and each seemed simply to float, like a little boat." A year later, Marc and Bella became bride and groom. The Rosenfelds were against the marriage: "He will never earn a living. You will come to ruin with him, my daughter; you will come to ruin for nothing! And besides, he's an artist. And what is that? And what will people say? But what can one do, if that is what she wants. She simply cannot be persuaded."  

Bella regularly appears in his works: "It grew dark. I kissed her. A still life is magically born in my thoughts. She poses for me. Lying down, a white cloth wraps around her. I approach her timidly. I confess, for the first time in my life I saw a naked woman. Although she was almost my fiancée, I was still afraid to draw near her, to come quite close to her, to touch that treasure." She writes to him: "I write to you because our souls are interwoven, and the soul sometimes feels shared, and sometimes different. It is strange that, before life joined us together, we were already trying, each on our own, to reach that same point."

It seemed they would marry, but Chagall felt somehow sad and frightened, even anxious… Putting off matters of marriage for later, he went to St Petersburg to study under Léon Bakst: "I wandered the streets and prayed: "God, You who hide in the clouds or behind the shoemaker's house, let me discover my soul, the wistful soul of a stammering boy, reveal to me my path. I do not want to be like everyone else; I want to see a new world."

A period of separation continued. He moved to Paris. It was a time of separation. Success came, the artist was noticed, and his name was heard more and more in the creative circles of Paris: "For me, art is above all a state of the soul. Everyone's soul is a sanctuary, at every point of the globe. Only an honest heart is free, and has its own logic and reason." Bella experienced his art, as well as her own acting, as something almost sacred: "I would really like to tell you everything your paintings say to me."

 

Marc returned to Vitebsk in 1914 to marry Bella. Their relationship gave him great self-confidence and affirmed him as a painter. The painting Nude over Vitebsk, shows him and Bella united. Vitebsk comes from the past and belongs to the childhood ever-present on his canvases, while Bella belongs to the present and tells a story of love, togetherness, union: "Only you, only you, have stayed with me. The only one about whom my soul will not utter a single superfluous word. When I look at you for a long time, it seems to me that you are my own work. You have often saved my canvases from a dark fate. I do not understand people, any more than I understand my own paintings; everything you say is true. Guide my hand. Take up the brush and carry me, as a conductor carries an orchestra, towards unknown distances. May our late parents bless the conception of our paintings."

A great change in their life came with the birth of their daughter, Ida. At first with great difficulty, especially for him: "I dreamed of a boy, and you were born, little Ida." It took him time to get used to a baby's crying and other things: "I cannot bear a child's piercing cry. It's terrible! In short, I am not behaving very fatherly." Ida became increasingly important to him. On the wall behind his daughter's wedding chair, Chagall placed his own wedding portrait, The Birthday: "I always thought: I do not have many friends on this earth – only my wife, because she has nothing against me." 

For the next 30 years, the trio he formed with Bella and Ida would be a rock he could lean on, giving him emotional steadiness in the traumatic times of revolution, exile and war. The family atmosphere, or some detail from their life, often appears in the paintings – the flowers she brought into the house every day, the sitting room where she often read stories aloud while he painted, and so on: " They go on laughing. Ida jumps off the piano and wants to hear a story, so it all seems like a deliberately created, fantastical occasion for laughter for this "strange" family, with all the humour and tragedy of Russia. And father Marc, the maddest of the three "children", pulls faces, sticks out his tongue at his daughter, pokes his wife in the ribs, lets his hair fall over his forehead – and draws at the same time… And all the while Marc laughs like this, pulls faces, lets Ida pinch him, bite him, sighing as though repeating every day: "I am so unhappy! I want to die!"".

As the war was ending, Chagall and Bella were preparing to return to France from America, but Bella suddenly died in hospital of a viral infection, and Chagall, overwhelmed with grief, could not recover from the loss of his beloved wife for nine months. All the paintings in his studio were then turned to face the wall. For him "everything became dark". For a long time he was recovering from the loss of his beloved wife. And perhaps he never fully recovered: "I thought of the treasures hidden in Bella's heart… filled with love… Was she ashamed of me, of people, did she always want to remain in the shadow? Until she heard the voice of the Jewish soul…, until her parents' language became her own language again…".

Chagall died in Vence in 1985. We close this text with Chagall's own words:

"Despite all the hardships of this world, there has remained within me a part of that spiritualised love in which I was raised, and faith in the man who has known love. In our life, as on the painter's palette, there is only one colour that can give meaning to life and to art. The Colour of Love.".