Marc Chagall: Stained glass windows at Tudeley
Title: Stained glass windows at Tudeley
Artist: Marc Chagall (1887-1985, Belorussian-French)
Location: All Saints’, Tudeley (Ecumenical: C of E and URC)
Date: 1967–85
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 were 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.
Detailed information on the subject of each window is available here.
‘Will God or someone give me the power to breathe my sigh into my canvases, the sigh of prayer and sadness, the prayer of salvation, of rebirth?’ – Marc Chagall
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.
During his career Chagall accepted many non-Jewish commissions, including ‘stained glass for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, a Dag Hammarskjöld 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.
Source: Lewis, Michael J. “Whatever Happened to Marc Chagall?” Commentary, October, 2008.
Further Information
Medium: Stained glass
Permanent display
See Chagall’s Stained glass windows at Tudeley on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: Sir Henry and Lady d’Avigdor-Goldsmid
Other artworks in churches by Marc Chagall: Let Everything That Has Breath Praise The Lord (1978), Window at Chichester Cathedral; Windows (1978–85), Church of St Stephen, Mainz, Germany; Prophets, Jacob, Zion, Christ, Law (1970), windows, Fraumünster Abbey, Zurich, Switzerland; Joel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Cherubim, Elijah, The Crucifixion (1964), windows, Union Church of Pocantico Hills, NY, US