Chagall's Bible: The Painter as Printmaker

by Jean Block Rosensaft

Marc Chagall was born on July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, Russia, into a large family of modest circumstances. During his childhood, Vitebsk's population was approximately 66,000, of which a little more than half were Jews. A center of Orthodox Judaism, Vitebsk combined the tradition of Lithuanian Jewish scholarship with the strong influence of Habad Hasidism.

As a young child, Chagall went to cheder (religious school), as did three-quarters of school-age Jewish children in Vitebsk during the last years of the 19th century. Of his memories of his early education, Chagall recalled: "I think my first little rabbi from Mohileff had the greatest influence on me. Just imagine! Every Saturday, instead of going bathing in the river, my mother sent me to him to study Bible."

Hasidism and the Bible were the two formative influences on Chagall's imagination. Chagall's autobiography, My Life, (published in 1922 in Berlin when the artist was only thirty-five years old) was filled with descriptions of Hasidic Jewish life—wedding celebrations, prayer at the synagogue, dreams of angels, consultation with the spiritual leader of Habad Hasidism, Rabbi Schneersohn, and Chagall's Messianic beliefs expressed through childhood fantasies about Elijah arriving at his door disguised as a weary beggar.

The Bible, meanwhile, became a central theme in Chagall's work, from his earliest paintings in Paris in the early 1910s. Chagall was a member of the ‘Circle of Montparnasse'—the group of poets, painters and sculptors, many of whom were Jews from Eastern Europe, who had come to Paris in the early decades of the 20th century seeking freedom and opportunity. Chagall's first depictions in paintings, gouaches, and drawings of such Old Testament subjects as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, as well as his treatments of such New Testament subjects as Calvary and the resurrection of Lazarus, were indicative of Chagall's need to define his identity in the new context of Paris, an environment radically unlike Jewish Vitebsk. Indeed, his creative process throughout his long and productive career as a printmaker and painter enabled Chagall to both analyze his identity and explore his imagination.

Chagall first began making prints in 1922 in Berlin, after he had been a painter for fifteen years and after he had left Russia for the second and last time. The art dealer and publisher, Paul Cassirer, and his director, Walter Feilchenfeldt, were responsible for introducing Chagall to the great German printmaker, Hermann Struck. Their hope was that Chagall would produce etched illustrations for their publication of the artist's autobiography, My Life, which Chagall had completed in Moscow in 1922.

While in Germany for several months that year, Chagall devoted himself to printmaking, perhaps influenced by the importance of prints in 20th century German art. Chagall briefly experimented with lithography and woodcuts, but quickly developed a preference for the more time-consuming and demanding (and thus less popular) technique of etching. Chagall's The Farm (1922-23), a lithograph dating from this period, is representative of Chagall's earliest graphic works with its naive linearity and autobiographical subject matter evoking the simplicity of the artist's life in Vitebsk.

It was at this time that Chagall was summoned from Berlin to Paris by his poet friend, Blaise Cendrars, who wrote, "Come back, you're famous, and Vollard is waiting for you." Ironically, when Chagall had returned to Russia in 1914 to marry his beloved Bella and had remained to participate in the Bolshevik Revolution as Commissar of Art in Vitebsk, it was believed by his Parisian friends that he had died. Paintings which Chagall had left behind in Paris had been sold to collectors, including the art critic Gustave Cocquiot in whose home Ambroise Vollard, the noted art dealer and publisher, first discovered Chagall's work.

Chagall quickly returned to Paris and embarked on a relationship with Vollard that would dramatically broaden his horizons as an artist. As Chagall explained, "The encounter with Vollard, who commissioned from me large illustrated books. . .also contributed to orient me in another voice." Vollard's gallery was filled with works by Cezanne, Renoir, Maillol, Bonnard, Pissaro, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse and others. Vollard's genius was in commissioning the important artists of his day to produce illustrated books.

Beginning with 110 etchings illustrating Gogol's Dead Souls (1923-27), Chagall went on to illustrate La Fontaine's Fables (1928-30). The French public was outraged by Vollard's assignment of this French classic to a foreign artist. Yet Vollard defended Chagall's special ability to capture the Oriental quality of these stories. In these 100 etchings, including Les Deux Coqs, Le Cure et le Mort, Le Lion Devenu Vieux, L'enfant et le MaTtre d'Ecole, and Le Renard et la Cicogne, Chagall mastered complex textures and painterly effects. As in his paintings, Chagall expressed an anthropomorphic affinity with the animals he depicted, enhancing the humanism of the moral lessons conveyed in these fables.

Chagall and Vollard's third, and last, collaboration was the Bible (1931-39, 1952-56). Le Livre des Prophetes. as this project was initially titled, was originally intended to comprise five volumes: Genesis. Book of Kings. Book of Prophets, Song of Songs, and The Apocalypse. Vollard's equally impractical intention was for Chagall to create forty etchings for each volume. Vollard frequently visited Chagall at the printmaking atelier of Maurice Potin, where Chagall completed his plates. Vollard greatly appreciated Chagall's work and felt that the Bible would be his and Chagall's monumental work. In his quest for fame, Vollard wanted to be immortalized as the publisher of a modern Bible.

At the time of Vollard's accidental death in 1939, several months before the outbreak of the second World War, sixty-five Bible etchings had been printed and were in Vollard's possession, thirty-five remained to be printed at Potin's studio, and the last five plates had been delivered by Chagall to Vollard the morning before his death. Neither Dead Souls nor Fables, although printed, had been issued by the eminent publisher, who was generally inclined to hoard artists' works for long periods of time. At his demise, large numbers of prints and artists' books by Rouault, Braque, Derain, Picasso and others had never been released.

Vollard's brother, Lucien, announced his intention to issue the Bible on June 1, 1940, but with the fall of France to the Germans, this was never realized. Upon Chagall's return to France in 1948, after his exile in the United States during the second World War, he and his daughter Ida reestablished contact with Lucien Vollard. They were able to recover the plates which had been divided among the publisher's heirs. Ida, who had chosen the biblical passages for each etching, was ultimately responsible for seeing that Chagall's three suites for Vollard were published by Teriade.

Teriade began his career as the art page editor of L'Intransigeant (1928-32) and editor, from 1933, of the first issues of the Surrealist revue Minotaure. Publisher of the celebrated art revue, Verve (1937-60), Teriade was responsible for publishing 26 artists, books by the greatest artists of the School of Paris, including Matisse's Jazz (1947), Picasso's Le Chant des Morts (1948) and Miró's Ubu Roi (1966). To realize the remaining forty plates of the Bible, fifteen years after the initial sixty-five were pulled at the Potin atelier before the war, Teriade had to rediscover the inks and papers which had been used previously. Chagall saw to the homogeneous printing of the last 40 plates at the atelier of Raymond Haasen from 1952-56.

Completed in 1956, Chagall's Bible ultimately comprised two volumes and 105 etchings. 275 sets on Montval paper and 20 Hors Commerce sets for collaborators were signed by the artist. An additional 100 albums on Velin d'Arches paper were hand-colored, signed and numbered by Chagall.

Chagall's Bible etchings are recognized for their virtuosity of technique and expression and for their sensitive portrayal of the humanity of the Biblical patriarchs, prophets and kings. Reflecting the creativity of twenty-five years of the artist's life, this suite conveys psychologically acute portraits, based on the simple Hasidic Jews of Chagall's Vitebsk childhood, of key moments in the interaction between man and God.

Chagall's travels to Palestine, where he absorbed the impact of the desert landscape and light, as well as his visits to Holland, Italy and Spain, where he studied the works of Rembrandt and El Greco, influenced the imagery and atmosphere of his Bible etchings. Chagall's torment at the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, culminating in the annihilation of European Jewry during the Holocaust, was reflected in the tragic expression of Chagall's four last etchings for this suite which were completed after the war. When liberated from the distraction of color, Chagall's black and white Bible suite achieves a concentrated manifestation of humanity and sentiment. His application of painterly accents of color in his hand-colored suite, however, enriches our pleasure in these works and reinforces the inherent colorism that Chagall had already achieved through the etching process with its sophisticated textures and complex translucent light effects.

About the Author

Jean Bloch Rosensaft is the author of Chagall and the Bible (Universe Books, 1987). She curated the exhibition of Chagall's Bible suite at the Jewish Museum, New York, in celebration of the centennial of Chagall's birth in 1987. Formerly Assistant Director of Education at the Jewish Museum, she presently is National Director for Public Affairs at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

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