View allAll Photos Tagged Resurrect
"KING of KINGS & LORD of LORDS"
"Now the King eternal, immortal,
invisible, the only GOD, be honor and
glory for ever and ever Amen".
1Tim. 1:17
A huge fire that began Friday evening around 3 a.m. on December 17, 2010 completely gutted the historic Mormon Tabernacle in Provo, Utah. The fire burned until late Saturday afternoon, leaving the historic 1898 building a total ruin. It was decided to restore and repurpose the building to become a Temple instead of a Tabernacle.
Happy Window Wednesday!
To see the project from start to finish check out my album here: www.flickr.com/photos/19779889@N00/albums/721576332841129...
This is an important event associated with Mylapore Kapaleeswarar Temple . Saint Thirugnanasambandar brought to life Angam Poompavai who had died earlier due to a snake bite and her ashes were preserved in an earthen pot by her father Sivanesan Chettiar. Thirugnanasambandar sang a pathigam which brought her back to life.The Pathigam extols various festivities associated with the temple.
மட்டிட்ட புன்னையங் கானன் மடமயிலைக்
கட்டிட்டங் கொண்டான் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
ஒட்டிட்ட பண்பி னுருத்திர பல்கணத்தார்க்
கட்டிட்டல் காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
மைப்பயந்த வொண்கண் மடநல்லார் மாமயிலைக்
கைப்பயந்த நீற்றான் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
ஐப்பசி யோண விழாவு மருந்தவர்கள்
துய்ப்பனவுங் காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
வளைக்கை மடநல்லார் மாமயிலை வண்மறுகில்
துளக்கில் கபாலீச் சரத்தான்றொல் கார்த்திகைநாள்
தளத்தேந் திளமுலையார் தையலார் கொண்டாடும்
விளக்கீடு காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
ஊர்திரை வேலை யுலாவு முயர்மயிலைக்
கூர்தரு வேல்வல்லார் கொற்றங்கொள் சேரிதனில்
கார்தரு சோலைக் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
ஆர்திரைநாள் காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
மைப்பூசு மொண்கண் மடநல்லார் மாமயிலைக்
கைப்பூசு நீற்றான் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
நெய்ப்பூசு மொண்புழுக்க னேரிழையார் கொண்டாடும்
தைப்பூசங் காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
மடலார்ந்த தெங்கின் மயிலையார் மாசிக்
கடலாட்டுக் கண்டான் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
அடலானே றூரு மடிக ளடிபரவி
நடமாடல் காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
மலிவிழா வீதி மடநல்லார் மாமயிலைக்
கலிவிழாக் கண்டான் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
பலிவிழாப் பாடல்செய் பங்குனி யுத்தரநாள்
ஒலிவிழாக் காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
தண்ணா வரக்கன்றோள் சாய்த்துகந்த தாளினான்
கண்ணார் மயிலைக் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
பண்ணார் பதினெண் கணங்கடம் மட்டமிநாள்
கண்ணாரக் காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
நற்றா மரைமலர்மே னான்முகனு நாரணனும்
முற்றாங் குணர்கிலா மூர்த்தி திருவடியைக்
கற்றார்க ளேத்துங் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
பொற்றாப்புக் காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
உரிஞ்சாய வாழ்க்கை யமணுடையைப் போர்க்கும்
இருஞ்சாக் கியர்க ளெடுத்துரைப்ப நாட்டில்
கருஞ்சோலை சூழ்ந்த கபாலீச் சரத்தான்றன்
பெருஞ்சாந்தி காணாதே போதியோ பூம்பாவாய்.
கானமர் சோலைக் கபாலீச் சரமமர்ந்தான்
தேனமர் பூம்பாவைப் பாட்டாகச் செந்தமிழான்
ஞானசம் பந்த னலம்புகழ்ந்த பத்தும்வல்லார்
வானசம் பந்தத் தவரோடும் வாழ்வாரே.
திருஞானசம்பந்தர் 2nd திருமுறை
The Southaven Gordmans had numerous little wooden boxes with curtsey sayings like these two! There was an impressive amount of home décor merchandise in that store actually. Too bad it's gone now :( Well, it's back (just like that!), but I don't know if the newly-resurrected Gordmans will have the sheer volume of home décor it had previously!
____________________________________
Gordmans, 2006-built (closed 2017-reopened 2017!), Airways Blvd. near Nail Rd., Southaven MS
Blustons, Kentish Town England, until it closed last year (2015) was a rare example of an arcade shop and as such was afforded a Grade II listing. Unfortunately, it sat empty for a while but it has recently opened again and appears to be continuing in the 'smattah' (Yiddish for clothing) business - just like it had been since 1932. It is great to see this iconic shop in use again.
[+1 in comments] Inspired. Flickr sharpening murdered this picture. -.- VIEW IN LIGHTBOX, I BEG YOU.
First attempt at an expansion! Now that I finally know how to do it. I'm happy. (:
It snowed today for the first time in the season. And rained. And sleeted. And hailed. And it was sunny, too! Oh, how I love how much character Michigan has. :D
This is my driveway, and I take a lot of pictures here. Here, let me note all the places I've taken pictures. ;)
It's 11.11.11. And I didn'te remember to make a wish at 11:11:11. I was too busy freaking out. Oh well, I'll just send up a little prayer tonight. ;)
Anthophora plumipes from the Netherlands. Not long ago this species was split. Populations in Asia (where the boundary was is not clear to me) were split from the European ones and the old name A. villosula was resurrected. The populations that were transported to the U.S. from Asia thus had their names changed too. Photograph by Erik Hernandez from the Wild Bee Lab
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All photographs are public domain, feel free to download and use as you wish.
Photography Information:
Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200
We Are Made One with What We Touch and See
We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.
- Oscar Wilde
You can also follow us on Instagram - account = USGSBIML
Want some Useful Links to the Techniques We Use? Well now here you go Citizen:
Best over all technical resource for photo stacking:
Art Photo Book: Bees: An Up-Close Look at Pollinators Around the World:
www.amazon.com/Bees-Up-Close-Pollinators-Around-World/dp/...
Free Field Guide to Bee Genera of Maryland:
bio2.elmira.edu/fieldbio/beesofmarylandbookversion1.pdf
Basic USGSBIML set up:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-_yvIsucOY
USGSBIML Photoshopping Technique: Note that we now have added using the burn tool at 50% opacity set to shadows to clean up the halos that bleed into the black background from "hot" color sections of the picture.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdmx_8zqvN4
Bees of Maryland Organized by Taxa with information on each Genus
www.flickr.com/photos/usgsbiml/collections
PDF of Basic USGSBIML Photography Set Up:
ftp://ftpext.usgs.gov/pub/er/md/laurel/Droege/How%20to%20Take%20MacroPhotographs%20of%20Insects%20BIML%20Lab2.pdf
Google Hangout Demonstration of Techniques:
plus.google.com/events/c5569losvskrv2nu606ltof8odo
or
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c15neFttoU
Excellent Technical Form on Stacking:
Contact information:
Sam Droege
sdroege@usgs.gov
301 497 5840
Photo license: CC-BY-SA. This photo can be reused as you wish. When doing so, please credit the creator (USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab) and the source (Naturalis Biodiversity Center) and adaptations must be shared under the same terms.
The specimen in this photo is provided by Naturalis Biodiversity Center in The Netherlands. For inquiries please contact: Frederique Bakker, email: frederique.bakker@naturalis.nl.
This image is part of the photo series ‘Cool bees of The Netherlands’. For more information: marten.schoonman@natu
A Reboot of My RX-78-2 Gundam in Lego redesigned for Brickfete Toronto 2015.
more info...
www.mocpages.com/moc.php/412700
and
Broad gauge suburban 'Redhen' railcar no.430 arrives at the inner suburban station of Bowden working an Adelaide to Grange TransAdelaide service during May 1989.
The station building dates back to 1856 and in recent years has been renovated and in 2015 operates as a cafe/restaurant.
The breakroom Dart has clearly been resurrected (blue cable might be a clue as to how), as here its on St Marys Street on 21.7.21 heading for the depot at the end of the day. The driver is waving at his colleague coming the other way.
Résurrection …
J’irai sur la route
Pas l’ombre d’un doute
Je marcherai devant
Toujours en avant
Une Pensée, à ceux qui sont dans la douleur
Et qui broient du Noir
Je voudrai leur donner l’espoir
Pour qu’ ils retrouvent le Bonheur
Capturer des images
Pour qu’ils puissent, comme des Sages
A leur tour
Retrouver l’Amour, en ce nouveau jour
Domi
Resurrection ...
I'll go on the road
No shadow of a doubt
I will go before
Always forward
Thought to those in pain
And that grind the Black
I would like to give them hope
For that they find Happiness
Capturing images
For that they, like the Wise
In turn
Find Love
Domi
Jeudi 13 juillet 2023. Semaine 28, Saints Henri & Joël — 194/171. Plieux. Plutôt bien dormi, levé à sept heures. L’Arrière-Pays, Sandrine Rousseau. “Souvenirs Facebook”. Le Jour ni l’Heure, autoportrait de la nuit et portrait présumé de Georg Hastings, premier comte de Huntingdon (j’ai des doutes, les autres portraits delui ne ressemblent pas du tout à cela), par Ambrosius Benson, c. 1525-1530 (?). Comptes : Dernière connexion le 12/07/2023 à 09h50 /// Bonjour M. CAMUS /// Avoirs 46,26 € /// Crédits -32.259,98 € /// Solde au 12/07/2023 -67,74 € /// À venir -234,02 € | Prévisionnel -301,76 € /// Débiteur depuis 3 jours /// Acta. 11:26:03 /////// LJNH / Flickr. Journal (Sandrine Rousseau). Le Jour ni l’Heure, deux détails, le Christ et un grand château, du triptyque de l’abbaye de Dieleghem, par le Maître de l’abbaye de Dieleghem, ou Maître de 1518 (Jan van Dornicke), Le Christ chez Simon le Pharisien et la Résurrection de Lazare, 1520, musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique à Bruxelles, dimanche 7 mai 2023 ; plus le Paysage préposthume n° 111, La Villa, Saint-Cyr-sur-Morin, le dimanche 26 août 2012. Sixième sonate de Prokofiev, 1939. Oublié la gymnastique. Journal, complétion, relecture et mise en ligne publique. Toilette au faitout et au gant. La Destruction des Européens d’Europe. Visite sur rendez-vous de M. O., voisin de château, professeur d’université, auteur, consultant et personnalité médiatique — il apporte une bouteille de champagne, que nous buvons avec lui. Le raccompagnons sur la place Saint-Pierre à huit heures. Tour avec Pierre sur le plateau, chemin de la Rouquette, revenus par l’allée Alfred-de-Dreux, malgré les quelques difficultés du passage. Temps très agréable et frais. Dîné très à mon goût, saumon cru, petit légumes et riz, avec le reste du champagne du professeur O. Revu deux épisodes d’un Pride & Prejudice anglais, avec un Darcy qui est le portrait tout craché du jeune Beethoven. Il y en a un troisième, et peut-être un quatrième, mais je dois travailler. La Destruction des Européens d’Europe, 65.358 signes (France Culture). Couché à minuit.
En route home from doing a bit of scouting for possible blossom photography sites I was on the North Service Road at the site immediately adjacent to the Tim Horton’s as well as the ESSO gas station I had photographed a few days ago. The large tract of land on the South shore of Lake Ontario was, for many years, the site of Prudhomme’s motel/hotel and entertainment complex, until a massive first fire in June 1967 signalled the beginning of the end of the complex. A few efforts were made to resurrect the business but, ultimately, a second fire and lack of investment in a proper restoration destined it for the bulldozers and many years of awaiting development. In the past couple of years development finally commenced, albeit somewhat slowly, and the two aforementioned images show the progress to date. Now a bit more work has begun, although the site still looks pretty barren with large concrete blocks and barriers suggesting the future layout. I stopped there during a brief lull in the rain and got this.– JW
Date Taken: 2025-05-01
Date PP: 2025-05-02
(c) Copyright 2025 JW Vraets
If you are interested in prints or licensing of any of my images, DM me with a brief description of what you may be looking for.
Tech Details:
Taken using hand-held Nikon D800 fitted with an AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm VR 1:4.0 lense set to 58mm, ISO100 (Auto ISO), Daylight WB, Matrix metering, Shutter Priority Mode, f/6.3, 1/400 sec. PP in free Open Source RAWTherapee from Nikon RAW/NEF source: Set final image size to 9000px wide, level the horizon and crop the frame to a 16x9 format, convert to black-and-white/B&W/monochrome, apply Tone Mapping as well as Dynamic Range Compression each at default levels, use the Graduated Neutral Density/GND tool to darken the sky to bring out the storm clouds, slightly increase Contrast, sharpen, save. PP in free Open Source GIMP: use the Levels tool to set up a good base tonal range, use the Brightness/Contrast tool to increase overall contrast, duplicate the frame to a new top layer and use the Curves tool to adjust the contrast and brightness of the sales building in the background (disregarding the impact on the rest of the frame) and add a black/transparent layer mask following which a white brush was used to pain in the sales building on the mask to make the better looking version visible, ad a non-destructive Dodge/Burn layer and use it to make some localized adjustments to sky brightness, make new working layer from visible result, sharpen, save, scale to 7100 px wide, sharpen, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 3700 px wide for posting online, sharpen very slightly, save.
1628 [LF52 UON] LF52UON (TW):
Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd.:
Dennis Dart SLF SFD6BA /
Plaxton Mini Pointer Dart (8.8m)
N29F - 8/2002
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (NEC-1628) (08/06/2018)
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (TW-1628) (01/04/2017)
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (GL-1628) (23/01/2016)
Refurbished at Bus & Coach World, Blackburn, arrived at Arriva Medway Towns Ltd., Gillingham 10/09/2012
Ex-Arriva London North Ltd., Wood Green (EC-PDL77) (8/2012)
Withdrawn March 2012, stored at Edmonton
Ex-Arriva London South Ltd., South Croydon (CN-PDL77) (7/2003)
New to Arriva London South Ltd., South Croydon (CN-PDL77)
Finally returned from being on-loan Maidstone on April 14th, but spent the last couple of weeks VOR due to requiring extensive chassis work, and a new fuel tank.
A21 feeder Hastings Road, North Farm, Royal Tunbridge Wells
Sunday 2nd May 2021
Works like a charm after more than 15 years of slumber. I'm going to use it for some experiments with film, a box of Kodak Porta 400NC arrived last Friday.
Strobist Info: Nikon SB-900 iTTL on the upper left, triggered by in-camera flash (Nikon CLS).
"Moine, laisse-moi entrer dans cette grotte. J'aime les grottes, et j'ai pitié de ceux qui y cherchent refuge. C'est dans une grotte que j'ai mis au monde mon enfant, et c'est dans une grotte que je l'ai confié sans crainte à la mort, afin qu'il subisse la seconde naissance de la Résurrection."
Marguerite Yourcenar, Notre-Dame-des-Hirondelles, in Nouvelles Orientales
["Monk, let me enter this cave. I love caves, and I have pity on those who seek refuge in them. It is in a cave I brought my child into the world, and it is in a cave I entrusted him without fear to death, so that he would pass through the second birth of Resurrection"]
The crypt in the Basilica of Vézelay on Christmas day. "Green trim" 25mm f/1.8 APS-C CCTV lens.
Thank you everyone for your visits, faves and comments, they are always appreciated :)
Jean Grey has (finally) returned to the land of the living and will be leading her own team this week in X-Men: Red!
1628 [LF52 UON] LF52UON (TW):
Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd.:
Dennis Dart SLF SFD6BA /
Plaxton Mini Pointer Dart (8.8m)
N29F - 8/2002
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (NEC-1628) (08/06/2018)
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (TW-1628) (01/04/2017)
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (GL-1628) (23/01/2016)
Refurbished at Bus & Coach World, Blackburn, arrived at Arriva Medway Towns Ltd., Gillingham 10/09/2012
Ex-Arriva London North Ltd., Wood Green (EC-PDL77) (8/2012)
Withdrawn March 2012, stored at Edmonton
Ex-Arriva London South Ltd., South Croydon (CN-PDL77) (7/2003)
New to Arriva London South Ltd., South Croydon (CN-PDL77)
Finally returned from being on-loan Maidstone on April 14th, but spent the last couple of weeks VOR due to requiring extensive chassis work, and a new fuel tank.
A21 feeder Hastings Road, North Farm, Royal Tunbridge Wells
Sunday 2nd May 2021
Church of the Savior on Blood / Église de la Résurrection-du-Christ (du Sauveur « sur le sang versé »)
St Petersberg, Russia / Saint-Pétersbourg, Russie
Marc Zakharovich Chagall (/ʃəˈɡɑːl/ shə-GAHL;[3][nb 1] born Moishe Zakharovich Shagal;[4] 6 July [O.S. 24 June] 1887 – 28 March 1985) was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin.[1] An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic format, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.
Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century" (though Chagall saw his work as "not the dream of one people but of all humanity"). According to art historian Michael J. Lewis, Chagall was considered to be "the last survivor of the first generation of European modernists". For decades, he "had also been respected as the world's preeminent Jewish artist". Using the medium of stained glass, he produced windows for the cathedrals of Reims and Metz, windows for the UN, and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.
Before World War I, he travelled between Saint Petersburg, Paris and Berlin. During this period he created his own mixture and style of modern art based on his idea of Eastern European Jewish folk culture. He spent the wartime years in Soviet Belarus, becoming one of the country's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, founding the Vitebsk Arts College before leaving again for Paris in 1922.
He had two basic reputations, writes Lewis: as a pioneer of modernism and as a major Jewish artist. He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "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."[5] "When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is".[6]
Contents
1 Early life and education
1.1 Early life
1.2 Art education
1.3 Artistic inspiration
2 Art career
2.1 Russia (1906–1910)
2.2 France (1910–1914)
2.3 Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)
2.4 France (1923–1941)
2.4.1 The Bible illustrations
2.4.2 Nazi campaigns against modern art
2.4.3 Escaping occupied France
2.5 United States (1941–1948)
2.5.1 Aleko ballet (1942)
2.5.2 Coming to grips with World War II
2.5.3 Post-war years
2.6 France (1948–1985)
2.6.1 Ceiling of the Paris Opera (1963)
3 Art styles and techniques
3.1 Color
3.2 Subject matter
3.2.1 From life memories to fantasy
3.2.2 Jewish themes
Early life and education
Chagall's Parents
Marc Chagall was born Moishe Segal in a Lithuanian Jewish family in Liozna,[7] near the city of Vitebsk (Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire) in 1887.[note][8] At the time of his birth, Vitebsk's population was about 66,000, with half the population being Jewish.[5] A picturesque city of churches and synagogues, it was called "Russian Toledo", after a cosmopolitan city of the former Spanish Empire. As the city was built mostly of wood, little of it survived years of occupation and destruction during World War II.
Chagall was the eldest of nine children. The family name, Shagal, is a variant of the name Segal, which in a Jewish community was usually borne by a Levitic family.[9] His father, Khatskl (Zachar) Shagal, was employed by a herring merchant, and his mother, Feige-Ite, sold groceries from their home. His father worked hard, carrying heavy barrels but earning only 20 roubles each month (the average wages across the Russian Empire being 13 roubles a month). Chagall would later include fish motifs "out of respect for his father", writes Chagall biographer, Jacob Baal-Teshuva. Chagall wrote of these early years:
Day after day, winter and summer, at six o'clock in the morning, my father got up and went off to the synagogue. There he said his usual prayer for some dead man or other. On his return he made ready the samovar, drank some tea and went to work. Hellish work, the work of a galley-slave. Why try to hide it? How tell about it? No word will ever ease my father's lot... There was always plenty of butter and cheese on our table. Buttered bread, like an eternal symbol, was never out of my childish hands.[10]
One of the main sources of income of the Jewish population of the town was from the manufacture of clothing that was sold throughout Russia. They also made furniture and various agricultural tools.[11] From the late 18th century to the First World War, the Russian government confined Jews to living within the Pale of Settlement, which included modern Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia, almost exactly corresponding to the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth recently taken over by Imperial Russia. This caused the creation of Jewish market-villages (shtetls) throughout today's Eastern Europe, with their own markets, schools, hospitals, and other community institutions.[12]:14
Most of what is known about Chagall's early life has come from his autobiography, My Life. In it, he described the major influence that the culture of Hasidic Judaism had on his life as an artist. Vitebsk itself had been a center of that culture dating from the 1730s with its teachings derived from the Kabbalah. Chagall scholar Susan Tumarkin Goodman describes the links and sources of his art to his early home:
Chagall's art can be understood as the response to a situation that has long marked the history of Russian Jews. Though they were cultural innovators who made important contributions to the broader society, Jews were considered outsiders in a frequently hostile society... Chagall himself was born of a family steeped in religious life; his parents were observant Hasidic Jews who found spiritual satisfaction in a life defined by their faith and organized by prayer.[12]:14
Chagall was friends with Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, and later with Menachem M. Schneerson.[13]
Art education
Portrait of Chagall by Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, his first art teacher in Vitebsk
In Russia at that time, Jewish children were not allowed to attend regular Russian schools or universities. Their movement within the city was also restricted. Chagall therefore received his primary education at the local Jewish religious school, where he studied Hebrew and the Bible. At the age of 13, his mother tried to enroll him in a Russian high school, and he recalled, "But in that school, they don't take Jews. Without a moment's hesitation, my courageous mother walks up to a professor." She offered the headmaster 50 roubles to let him attend, which he accepted.[10]
A turning point of his artistic life came when he first noticed a fellow student drawing. Baal-Teshuva writes that for the young Chagall, watching someone draw "was like a vision, a revelation in black and white". Chagall would later say that there was no art of any kind in his family's home and the concept was totally alien to him. When Chagall asked the schoolmate how he learned to draw, his friend replied, "Go and find a book in the library, idiot, choose any picture you like, and just copy it". He soon began copying images from books and found the experience so rewarding he then decided he wanted to become an artist.[11]
He eventually confided to his mother, "I want to be a painter", although she could not yet understand his sudden interest in art or why he would choose a vocation that "seemed so impractical", writes Goodman. The young Chagall explained, "There's a place in town; if I'm admitted and if I complete the course, I'll come out a regular artist. I'd be so happy!" It was 1906, and he had noticed the studio of Yehuda (Yuri) Pen, a realist artist who also operated a small drawing school in Vitebsk, which included the future artists El Lissitzky and Ossip Zadkine. Due to Chagall's youth and lack of income, Pen offered to teach him free of charge. However, after a few months at the school, Chagall realized that academic portrait painting did not suit his desires.[11]
Artistic inspiration
Marc Chagall, 1912, Calvary (Golgotha), oil on canvas, 174.6 × 192.4 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Alternative titles: Kreuzigung Bild 2 Christus gewidmet [Golgotha. Crucifixion. Dedicated to Christ]. Sold through Galerie Der Sturm (Herwarth Walden), Berlin to Bernhard Koehler (1849–1927), Berlin, 1913. Exhibited: Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin, 1913
Goodman notes that during this period in Russia, Jews had two basic alternatives for joining the art world: One was to "hide or deny one's Jewish roots". The other alternative—the one that Chagall chose—was "to cherish and publicly express one's Jewish roots" by integrating them into his art. For Chagall, this was also his means of "self-assertion and an expression of principle."[12]:14
Chagall biographer Franz Meyer, explains that with the connections between his art and early life "the hassidic spirit is still the basis and source of nourishment for his art."[14] Lewis adds, "As cosmopolitan an artist as he would later become, his storehouse of visual imagery would never expand beyond the landscape of his childhood, with its snowy streets, wooden houses, and ubiquitous fiddlers... [with] scenes of childhood so indelibly in one's mind and to invest them with an emotional charge so intense that it could only be discharged obliquely through an obsessive repetition of the same cryptic symbols and ideograms... "[5]
Years later, at the age of 57 while living in the United States, Chagall confirmed this when he published an open letter entitled, "To My City Vitebsk":
Why? Why did I leave you many years ago? ... You thought, the boy seeks something, seeks such a special subtlety, that color descending like stars from the sky and landing, bright and transparent, like snow on our roofs. Where did he get it? How would it come to a boy like him? I don't know why he couldn't find it with us, in the city—in his homeland. Maybe the boy is "crazy", but "crazy" for the sake of art. ...You thought: "I can see, I am etched in the boy's heart, but he is still 'flying,' he is still striving to take off, he has 'wind' in his head." ... I did not live with you, but I didn't have one single painting that didn't breathe with your spirit and reflection.[15]
Art career
Russia (1906–1910)
In 1906, he moved to Saint Petersburg which was then the capital of Russia and the center of the country's artistic life with its famous art schools. Since Jews were not permitted into the city without an internal passport, he managed to get a temporary passport from a friend. He enrolled in a prestigious art school and studied there for two years.[11] By 1907, he had begun painting naturalistic self-portraits and landscapes.
Between 1908 and 1910, Chagall was a student of Léon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting. While in Saint Petersburg, he discovered experimental theater and the work of such artists as Paul Gauguin.[16] Bakst, also Jewish, was a designer of decorative art and was famous as a draftsman designer of stage sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes, and helped Chagall by acting as a role model for Jewish success. Bakst moved to Paris a year later. Art historian Raymond Cogniat writes that after living and studying art on his own for four years, "Chagall entered into the mainstream of contemporary art. ...His apprenticeship over, Russia had played a memorable initial role in his life."[17]:30
Chagall stayed in Saint Petersburg until 1910, often visiting Vitebsk where he met Bella Rosenfeld. In My Life, Chagall described his first meeting her: "Her silence is mine, her eyes mine. It is as if she knows everything about my childhood, my present, my future, as if she can see right through me."[11]:22
France (1910–1914)
Marc Chagall, 1911–12, The Drunkard (Le saoul), 1912, oil on canvas. 85 × 115 cm. Private collection
Marc Chagall, 1912, The Fiddler, an inspiration for the musical Fiddler on the Roof[18]
In 1910, Chagall relocated to Paris to develop his artistic style. Art historian and curator James Sweeney notes that when Chagall first arrived in Paris, Cubism was the dominant art form, and French art was still dominated by the "materialistic outlook of the 19th century". But Chagall arrived from Russia with "a ripe color gift, a fresh, unashamed response to sentiment, a feeling for simple poetry and a sense of humor", he adds. These notions were alien to Paris at that time, and as a result, his first recognition came not from other painters but from poets such as Blaise Cendrars and Guillaume Apollinaire.[19]:7 Art historian Jean Leymarie observes that Chagall began thinking of art as "emerging from the internal being outward, from the seen object to the psychic outpouring", which was the reverse of the Cubist way of creating.[20]
He therefore developed friendships with Guillaume Apollinaire and other avant-garde luminaries such as Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger.[21] Baal-Teshuva writes that "Chagall's dream of Paris, the city of light and above all, of freedom, had come true."[11]:33 His first days were a hardship for the 23-year-old Chagall, who was lonely in the big city and unable to speak French. Some days he "felt like fleeing back to Russia, as he daydreamed while he painted, about the riches of Russian folklore, his Hasidic experiences, his family, and especially Bella".
In Paris, he enrolled at Académie de La Palette, an avant-garde school of art where the painters Jean Metzinger, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier taught, and also found work at another academy. He would spend his free hours visiting galleries and salons, especially the Louvre; artists he came to admire included Rembrandt, the Le Nain brothers, Chardin, van Gogh, Renoir, Pissarro, Matisse, Gauguin, Courbet, Millet, Manet, Monet, Delacroix, and others. It was in Paris that he learned the technique of gouache, which he used to paint Belarusian scenes. He also visited Montmartre and the Latin Quarter "and was happy just breathing Parisian air."[11] Baal-Teshuva describes this new phase in Chagall's artistic development:
Chagall was exhilarated, intoxicated, as he strolled through the streets and along the banks of the Seine. Everything about the French capital excited him: the shops, the smell of fresh bread in the morning, the markets with their fresh fruit and vegetables, the wide boulevards, the cafés and restaurants, and above all the Eiffel Tower.
Another completely new world that opened up for him was the kaleidoscope of colours and forms in the works of French artists. Chagall enthusiastically reviewed their many different tendencies, having to rethink his position as an artist and decide what creative avenue he wanted to pursue.[11]:33
During his time in Paris, Chagall was constantly reminded of his home in Vitebsk, as Paris was also home to many painters, writers, poets, composers, dancers, and other émigrés from the Russian Empire. However, "night after night he painted until dawn", only then going to bed for a few hours, and resisted the many temptations of the big city at night.[11]:44 "My homeland exists only in my soul", he once said.[20]:viii He continued painting Jewish motifs and subjects from his memories of Vitebsk, although he included Parisian scenes—- the Eiffel Tower in particular, along with portraits. Many of his works were updated versions of paintings he had made in Russia, transposed into Fauvist or Cubist keys.[5]
Marc Chagall, 1912, Still-life (Nature morte), oil on canvas, private collection
Chagall developed a whole repertoire of quirky motifs: ghostly figures floating in the sky, ... the gigantic fiddler dancing on miniature dollhouses, the livestock and transparent wombs and, within them, tiny offspring sleeping upside down.[5] The majority of his scenes of life in Vitebsk were painted while living in Paris, and "in a sense they were dreams", notes Lewis. Their "undertone of yearning and loss", with a detached and abstract appearance, caused Apollinaire to be "struck by this quality", calling them "surnaturel!" His "animal/human hybrids and airborne phantoms" would later become a formative influence on Surrealism.[5] Chagall, however, did not want his work to be associated with any school or movement and considered his own personal language of symbols to be meaningful to himself. But Sweeney notes that others often still associate his work with "illogical and fantastic painting", especially when he uses "curious representational juxtapositions".[19]:10
Sweeney writes that "This is Chagall's contribution to contemporary art: the reawakening of a poetry of representation, avoiding factual illustration on the one hand, and non-figurative abstractions on the other". André Breton said that "with him alone, the metaphor made its triumphant return to modern painting".[19]:7
Russia and Soviet Belarus (1914–1922)
Because he missed his fiancée, Bella, who was still in Vitebsk—"He thought about her day and night", writes Baal-Teshuva—and was afraid of losing her, Chagall decided to accept an invitation from a noted art dealer in Berlin to exhibit his work, his intention being to continue on to Belarus, marry Bella, and then return with her to Paris. Chagall took 40 canvases and 160 gouaches, watercolors and drawings to be exhibited. The exhibit, held at Herwarth Walden's Sturm Gallery was a huge success, "The German critics positively sang his praises."[11]
People's Art School where the Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art was situated
After the exhibit, he continued on to Vitebsk, where he planned to stay only long enough to marry Bella. However, after a few weeks, the First World War began, closing the Russian border for an indefinite period. A year later he married Bella Rosenfeld and they had their first child, Ida. Before the marriage, Chagall had difficulty convincing Bella's parents that he would be a suitable husband for their daughter. They were worried about her marrying a painter from a poor family and wondered how he would support her. Becoming a successful artist now became a goal and inspiration. According to Lewis, "[T]he euphoric paintings of this time, which show the young couple floating balloon-like over Vitebsk—its wooden buildings faceted in the Delaunay manner—are the most lighthearted of his career".[5] His wedding pictures were also a subject he would return to in later years as he thought about this period of his life.[11]:75
Bella with White Collar, 1917
In 1915, Chagall began exhibiting his work in Moscow, first exhibiting his works at a well-known salon and in 1916 exhibiting pictures in St. Petersburg. He again showed his art at a Moscow exhibition of avant-garde artists. This exposure brought recognition, and a number of wealthy collectors began buying his art. He also began illustrating a number of Yiddish books with ink drawings. He illustrated I. L. Peretz's The Magician in 1917.[22] Chagall was 30 years old and had begun to become well known.[11]:77
The October Revolution of 1917 was a dangerous time for Chagall although it also offered opportunity. By then he was one of the Russia's most distinguished artists and a member of the modernist avant-garde, which enjoyed special privileges and prestige as the "aesthetic arm of the revolution".[5] He was offered a notable position as a commissar of visual arts for the country[clarification needed], but preferred something less political, and instead accepted a job as commissar of arts for Vitebsk. This resulted in his founding the Vitebsk Arts College which, adds Lewis, became the "most distinguished school of art in the Soviet Union".
It obtained for its faculty some of the most important artists in the country, such as El Lissitzky and Kazimir Malevich. He also added his first teacher, Yehuda Pen. Chagall tried to create an atmosphere of a collective of independently minded artists, each with their own unique style. However, this would soon prove to be difficult as a few of the key faculty members preferred a Suprematist art of squares and circles, and disapproved of Chagall's attempt at creating "bourgeois individualism". Chagall then resigned as commissar and moved to Moscow.
In Moscow he was offered a job as stage designer for the newly formed State Jewish Chamber Theater. It was set to begin operation in early 1921 with a number of plays by Sholem Aleichem. For its opening he created a number of large background murals using techniques he learned from Bakst, his early teacher. One of the main murals was 9 feet (2.7 m) tall by 24 feet (7.3 m) long and included images of various lively subjects such as dancers, fiddlers, acrobats, and farm animals. One critic at the time called it "Hebrew jazz in paint". Chagall created it as a "storehouse of symbols and devices", notes Lewis.[5] The murals "constituted a landmark" in the history of the theatre, and were forerunners of his later large-scale works, including murals for the New York Metropolitan Opera and the Paris Opera.[11]:87
Famine spread after the war ended in 1918. The Chagalls found it necessary to move to a smaller, less expensive, town near Moscow, although he now had to commute to Moscow daily using crowded trains. In 1921, he worked as an art teacher in a Jewish boys' shelter in suburban Malakhovka, which housed orphaned refugees from Ukrainian pogroms.[6]:270 While there, he created a series of illustrations for the Yiddish poetry cycle Grief written by David Hofstein, who was another teacher at the Malakhovka shelter.[6]:273
After spending the years between 1921 and 1922 living in primitive conditions, he decided to go back to France so that he could develop his art in a more comfortable country. Numerous other artists, writers, and musicians were also planning to relocate to the West. He applied for an exit visa and while waiting for its uncertain approval, wrote his autobiography, My Life.[11]:121
France (1923–1941)
In 1923, Chagall left Moscow to return to France. On his way he stopped in Berlin to recover the many pictures he had left there on exhibit ten years earlier, before the war began, but was unable to find or recover any of them. Nonetheless, after returning to Paris he again "rediscovered the free expansion and fulfillment which were so essential to him", writes Lewis. With all his early works now lost, he began trying to paint from his memories of his earliest years in Vitebsk with sketches and oil paintings.[5]
He formed a business relationship with French art dealer Ambroise Vollard. This inspired him to begin creating etchings for a series of illustrated books, including Gogol's Dead Souls, the Bible, and the La Fontaine's Fables. These illustrations would eventually come to represent his finest printmaking efforts.[5] In 1924, he travelled to Brittany and painted La fenêtre sur l'Île-de-Bréhat.[23] By 1926 he had his first exhibition in the United States at the Reinhardt gallery of New York which included about 100 works, although he did not travel to the opening. He instead stayed in France, "painting ceaselessly", notes Baal-Teshuva.[11] It was not until 1927 that Chagall made his name in the French art world, when art critic and historian Maurice Raynal awarded him a place in his book Modern French Painters. However, Raynal was still at a loss to accurately describe Chagall to his readers:
Chagall interrogates life in the light of a refined, anxious, childlike sensibility, a slightly romantic temperament ... a blend of sadness and gaiety characteristic of a grave view of life. His imagination, his temperament, no doubt forbid a Latin severity of composition.[6]:314
During this period he traveled throughout France and the Côte d'Azur, where he enjoyed the landscapes, colorful vegetation, the blue Mediterranean Sea, and the mild weather. He made repeated trips to the countryside, taking his sketchbook.[6]:9 He also visited nearby countries and later wrote about the impressions some of those travels left on him:
I should like to recall how advantageous my travels outside France have been for me in an artistic sense—in Holland or in Spain, Italy, Egypt, Palestine, or simply in the south of France. There, in the south, for the first time in my life, I saw that rich greenness—the like of which I had never seen in my own country. In Holland I thought I discovered that familiar and throbbing light, like the light between the late afternoon and dusk. In Italy I found that peace of the museums which the sunlight brought to life. In Spain I was happy to find the inspiration of a mystical, if sometimes cruel, past, to find the song of its sky and of its people. And in the East [Palestine] I found unexpectedly the Bible and a part of my very being.[15]:77
The Bible illustrations
"The Prophet Jeremiah" (1968)
After returning to Paris from one of his trips, Vollard commissioned Chagall to illustrate the Old Testament. Although he could have completed the project in France, he used the assignment as an excuse to travel to Israel to experience for himself the Holy Land. He arrived there in February 1931 and ended up staying for two months. Chagall felt at home in Israel where many people spoke Yiddish and Russian. According to Jacob Baal-Teshuva, "he was impressed by the pioneering spirit of the people in the kibbutzim and deeply moved by the Wailing Wall and the other holy places".[11]:133
Chagall later told a friend that Israel gave him "the most vivid impression he had ever received". Wullschlager notes, however, that whereas Delacroix and Matisse had found inspiration in the exoticism of North Africa, he as a Jew in Israel had different perspective. "What he was really searching for there was not external stimulus but an inner authorization from the land of his ancestors, to plunge into his work on the Bible illustrations".[6]:343 Chagall stated that "In the East I found the Bible and part of my own being."
As a result, he immersed himself in "the history of the Jews, their trials, prophecies, and disasters", notes Wullschlager. She adds that beginning the assignment was an "extraordinary risk" for Chagall, as he had finally become well known as a leading contemporary painter, but would now end his modernist themes and delve into "an ancient past".[6]:350 Between 1931 and 1934 he worked "obsessively" on "The Bible", even going to Amsterdam in order to carefully study the biblical paintings of Rembrandt and El Greco, to see the extremes of religious painting. He walked the streets of the city's Jewish quarter to again feel the earlier atmosphere. He told Franz Meyer:
I did not see the Bible, I dreamed it. Ever since early childhood, I have been captivated by the Bible. It has always seemed to me and still seems today the greatest source of poetry of all time.[6]:350
Chagall saw the Old Testament as a "human story, ... not with the creation of the cosmos but with the creation of man, and his figures of angels are rhymed or combined with human ones", writes Wullschlager. She points out that in one of his early Bible images, "Abraham and the Three Angels", the angels sit and chat over a glass of wine "as if they have just dropped by for dinner".[6]:350
He returned to France and by the next year had completed 32 out of the total of 105 plates. By 1939, at the beginning of World War II, he had finished 66. However, Vollard died that same year. When the series was completed in 1956, it was published by Edition Tériade. Baal-Teshuva writes that "the illustrations were stunning and met with great acclaim. Once again Chagall had shown himself to be one of the 20th century's most important graphic artists".[11]:135 Leymarie has described these drawings by Chagall as "monumental" and,
...full of divine inspiration, which retrace the legendary destiny and the epic history of Israel to Genesis to the Prophets, through the Patriarchs and the Heroes. Each picture becomes one with the event, informing the text with a solemn intimacy unknown since Rembrandt.[20]:ix
Nazi campaigns against modern art
Not long after Chagall began his work on the Bible, Adolf Hitler gained power in Germany. Anti-Semitic laws were being introduced and the first concentration camp at Dachau had been established. Wullschlager describes the early effects on art:
The Nazis had begun their campaign against modernist art as soon as they seized power. Expressionist, cubist, abstract, and surrealist art—anything intellectual, Jewish, foreign, socialist-inspired, or difficult to understand—was targeted, from Picasso and Matisse going back to Cézanne and van Gogh; in its place traditional German realism, accessible and open to patriotic interpretation, was extolled.[6]:374
Beginning during 1937 about twenty thousand works from German museums were confiscated as "degenerate" by a committee directed by Joseph Goebbels.[6]:375 Although the German press had once "swooned over him", the new German authorities now made a mockery of Chagall's art, describing them as "green, purple, and red Jews shooting out of the earth, fiddling on violins, flying through the air ... representing [an] assault on Western civilization".[6]:376
After Germany invaded and occupied France, the Chagalls naively remained in Vichy France, unaware that French Jews, with the help of the Vichy government, were being collected and sent to German concentration camps, from which few would return. The Vichy collaborationist government, directed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, immediately upon assuming power established a commission to "redefine French citizenship" with the aim of stripping "undesirables", including naturalized citizens, of their French nationality. Chagall had been so involved with his art, that it was not until October 1940, after the Vichy government, at the behest of the Nazi occupying forces, began approving anti-Semitic laws, that he began to understand what was happening. Learning that Jews were being removed from public and academic positions, the Chagalls finally "woke up to the danger they faced". But Wullschlager notes that "by then they were trapped".[6]:382 Their only refuge could be America, but "they could not afford the passage to New York" or the large bond that each immigrant had to provide upon entry to ensure that they would not become a financial burden to the country.
Escaping occupied France
According to Wullschlager, "[T]he speed with which France collapsed astonished everyone: the French army, with British support, capitulated even more quickly than Poland had done" a year earlier. "Shock waves crossed the Atlantic... as Paris had until then been equated with civilization throughout the non-Nazi world."[6]:388 Yet the attachment of the Chagalls to France "blinded them to the urgency of the situation."[6]:389 Many other well-known Russian and Jewish artists eventually sought to escape: these included Chaim Soutine, Max Ernst, Max Beckmann, Ludwig Fulda, author Victor Serge and prize-winning author Vladimir Nabokov, who although not Jewish himself, was married to a Jewish woman.[24]:1181 Russian author Victor Serge described many of the people living temporarily in Marseille who were waiting to emigrate to America:
Here is a beggar's alley gathering the remnants of revolutions, democracies and crushed intellects... In our ranks are enough doctors, psychologists, engineers, educationalists, poets, painters, writers, musicians, economists and public men to vitalize a whole great country.[6]:392
After prodding by their daughter Ida, who "perceived the need to act fast",[6]:388 and with help from Alfred Barr of the New York Museum of Modern Art, Chagall was saved by having his name added to the list of prominent artists whose lives were at risk and who the United States should try to extricate. Varian Fry, the American journalist, and Hiram Bingham IV, the American Vice-Consul in Marseilles, ran a rescue operation to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of Europe to the US by providing them with forged visas to the US. Chagall was one of over 2,000 who were rescued by this operation. He left France in May 1941, "when it was almost too late", adds Lewis. Picasso and Matisse were also invited to come to America but they decided to remain in France. Chagall and Bella arrived in New York on 23 June 1941, the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union.[11]:150 Ida and her husband Michel followed on the notorious refugee ship SS Navemar with a large case of Chagall's work.[25] A chance post-war meeting in a French café between Ida and intelligence analyst Konrad Kellen led to Kellen carrying more paintings on his return to the United States.[26]
United States (1941–1948)
Photo portrait of Chagall in 1941 by Carl Van Vechten
Even before arriving in the United States in 1941, Chagall was awarded the Carnegie Prize third prize in 1939 for "Les Fiancés". After being in America he discovered that he had already achieved "international stature", writes Cogniat, although he felt ill-suited in this new role in a foreign country whose language he could not yet speak. He became a celebrity mostly against his will, feeling lost in the strange surroundings.[17]:57
After a while he began to settle in New York, which was full of writers, painters, and composers who, like himself, had fled from Europe during the Nazi invasions. He lived at 4 East 74th Street.[27] He spent time visiting galleries and museums, and befriended other artists including Piet Mondrian and André Breton.[11]:155
Baal-Teshuva writes that Chagall "loved" going to the sections of New York where Jews lived, especially the Lower East Side. There he felt at home, enjoying the Jewish foods and being able to read the Yiddish press, which became his main source of information since he did not yet speak English.[11]
Contemporary artists did not yet understand or even like Chagall's art. According to Baal-Teshuva, "they had little in common with a folkloristic storyteller of Russo-Jewish extraction with a propensity for mysticism." The Paris School, which was referred to as 'Parisian Surrealism,' meant little to them.[11]:155 Those attitudes would begin to change, however, when Pierre Matisse, the son of recognized French artist Henri Matisse, became his representative and managed Chagall exhibitions in New York and Chicago in 1941. One of the earliest exhibitions included 21 of his masterpieces from 1910 to 1941.[11] Art critic Henry McBride wrote about this exhibit for the New York Sun:
Chagall is about as gypsy as they come... these pictures do more for his reputation than anything we have previously seen... His colors sparkle with poetry... his work is authentically Russian as a Volga boatman's song...[28]
He was offered a commission by choreographer Leonid Massine of the Ballet Theatre of New York to design the sets and costumes for his new ballet, Aleko. This ballet would stage the words of Pushkin's verse narrative The Gypsies with the music of Tchaikovsky. While Chagall had done stage settings before while in Russia, this was his first ballet, and it would give him the opportunity to visit Mexico. While there he quickly began to appreciate the "primitive ways and colorful art of the Mexicans," notes Cogniat. He found "something very closely related to his own nature", and did all the color detail for the sets while there.[17] Eventually, he created four large backdrops and had Mexican seamstresses sew the ballet costumes.
When the ballet premiered on 8 September 1942 it was considered a "remarkable success."[11] In the audience were other famous mural painters who came to see Chagall's work, including Diego Rivera and José Orozco. According to Baal-Teshuva, when the final bar of music ended, "there was a tumultuous applause and 19 curtain calls, with Chagall himself being called back onto the stage again and again." The ballet also opened in New York City four weeks later at the Metropolitan Opera and the response was repeated, "again Chagall was the hero of the evening".[11]:158 Art critic Edwin Denby wrote of the opening for the New York Herald Tribune that Chagall's work:
has turned into a dramatized exhibition of giant paintings... It surpasses anything Chagall has done on the easel scale, and it is a breathtaking experience, of a kind one hardly expects in the theatre.[29]
Coming to grips with World War II
After Chagall returned to New York in 1943, however, current events began to interest him more, and this was represented by his art, where he painted subjects including the Crucifixion and scenes of war. He learned that the Germans had destroyed the town where he was raised, Vitebsk, and became greatly distressed.[11]:159 He also learned about the Nazi concentration camps.[11] During a speech in February 1944, he described some of his feelings:
Meanwhile, the enemy jokes, saying that we are a "stupid nation." He thought that when he started slaughtering the Jews, we would all in our grief suddenly raise the greatest prophetic scream, and would be joined by the Christian humanists. But, after two thousand years of "Christianity" in the world—say whatever you like—but, with few exceptions, their hearts are silent... I see the artists in Christian nations sit still—who has heard them speak up? They are not worried about themselves, and our Jewish life doesn't concern them.[15]:89
In the same speech he credited Soviet Russia with doing the most to save the Jews:
The Jews will always be grateful to it. What other great country has saved a million and a half Jews from Hitler's hands, and shared its last piece of bread? What country abolished antisemitism? What other country devoted at least a piece of land as an autonomous region for Jews who want to live there? All this, and more, weighs heavily on the scales of history.[15]:89
On 2 September 1944, Bella died suddenly due to a virus infection, which was not treated due to the wartime shortage of medicine. As a result, he stopped all work for many months, and when he did resume painting his first pictures were concerned with preserving Bella's memory.[17] Wullschlager writes of the effect on Chagall: "As news poured in through 1945 of the ongoing Holocaust at Nazi concentration camps, Bella took her place in Chagall's mind with the millions of Jewish victims." He even considered the possibility that their "exile from Europe had sapped her will to live."[6]:419
With Virginia Haggard McNeil
After a year of living with his daughter Ida and her husband Michel Gordey, he entered into a romance with Virginia Haggard, daughter of diplomat Sir Godfrey Digby Napier Haggard and great-niece of the author Sir Henry Rider Haggard; their relationship endured seven years. They had a child together, David McNeil, born 22 June 1946.[11] Haggard recalled her "seven years of plenty" with Chagall in her book, My Life with Chagall (Robert Hale, 1986).
A few months after the Allies succeeded in liberating Paris from Nazi occupation, with the help of the Allied armies, Chagall published a letter in a Paris weekly, "To the Paris Artists":
In recent years I have felt unhappy that I couldn't be with you, my friends. My enemy forced me to take the road of exile. On that tragic road, I lost my wife, the companion of my life, the woman who was my inspiration. I want to say to my friends in France that she joins me in this greeting, she who loved France and French art so faithfully. Her last joy was the liberation of Paris... Now, when Paris is liberated, when the art of France is resurrected, the whole world too will, once and for all, be free of the satanic enemies who wanted to annihilate not just the body but also the soul—the soul, without which there is no life, no artistic creativity.[15]:101
1628 [LF52 UON] LF52UON (TW):
Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd.:
Dennis Dart SLF SFD6BA /
Plaxton Mini Pointer Dart (8.8m)
N29F - 8/2002
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (NEC-1628) (08/06/2018)
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (TW-1628) (01/04/2017)
Ex-Arriva Kent & Surrey Ltd., Maidstone, Kent (GL-1628) (23/01/2016)
Refurbished at Bus & Coach World, Blackburn, arrived at Arriva Medway Towns Ltd., Gillingham 10/09/2012
Ex-Arriva London North Ltd., Wood Green (EC-PDL77) (8/2012)
Withdrawn March 2012, stored at Edmonton
Ex-Arriva London South Ltd., South Croydon (CN-PDL77) (7/2003)
New to Arriva London South Ltd., South Croydon (CN-PDL77)
Finally returned from being on-loan Maidstone on April 14th, but spent the last couple of weeks VOR due to requiring extensive chassis work, and a new fuel tank.
A21 feeder Hastings Road, North Farm, Royal Tunbridge Wells
Sunday 2nd May 2021
ROD 2004 is seen plinthed at Richmond Main Colliery following a recently completed static restoration.
2004 was one of a 521 strong type of 2-8-0 steam locomotives constructed between 1917 and 1918 and saw service mainly hauling military supply trains in France.
Following the conclusion of Word War 1, the majority of the class returned to Britain to assist the railways while the 'native' engines underwent overhaul and repair after prolonged wartime pressures had a severe impact on the railway system.
In the 1920's the J&A Brown company purchased 13 ROD's directly from the War Department to replace its somewhat eclectic collection of older mismatched motive power on the Richmond Vale Railway network.
These engines gave sterling service until 1973 when the last engine was withdrawn from traffic to be replaced by former South Maitland Railway's 10 class locomotives.
2004 (J&A Brown Number 23) is now one of only 3 ROD locomotives surviving in the world today, the other two also reside in Australia.