Ida chagall

Marc chagall second wife
Marc chagall son
Bella chagall cause of death

•

Bella Rosenfeld Chagall

CHAGALL, BELLA ROSENFELD (1895–1944), writer and wife of artist Marc *Chagall . Bella was born in Vitebsk, White Russia, the youngest of eight children of Shmuel Noah and Alta Rosenfeld. Her parents, owners of a successful jewelry business, were members of the ḥasidic community and conducted their family life according to Jewish tradition. However, they also sought out secular education and opportunities for their children. Chagall, who was educated in Russian language schools, became a student in the Faculty of Letters at the University of Moscow in her teens; she was particularly interested in theater and art, and as a university student, she contributed articles to a Moscow newspaper. In 1909, while visiting friends in St. Petersburg, she met Marc Chagall; their attraction was instantaneous and they were soon engaged. Although both were from Vitebsk, their social worlds were far apart and the Rosenfelds were unhappy with the engagement. The couple finally married in 1915 and their only child, Ida, was born the next year. In 1922, Marc Chagall moved hi

•

Leksikon Fun Der Nayer Yidisher Literatur

Shagal, Bela (Bella Rosenfeld Chagall) (December 15, 1895–September 2, 1944)

December 15, 1895–September 2, 1944

BELA SHAGAL (BELLA ROSENFELD CHAGALL) (December 15, 1895-September 2, 1944)

She was the author of stories, born in Vitebsk, Byelorussia, and the wife of Marc Chagall. She graduated from a women’s high school in Vitebsk and university in Moscow. In 1922 she was living in Paris. She published two volumes of memoirs: Brenendike likht (Burning light) (New York: Fraternaler folks-ordn, 1945), 254 pp., in English translation by Norbert Guterman as Burning Lights (1946); and Di ershte bagegenish (The first meeting) (New York: Fraternaler folks-ordn, 1947), 230 pp.—both volumes were published in French translations (1947). She also translated into French Marc Chagall’s Ma vie (My life). She died in New York.

Bella beside her portrait by Marc

With her husband Marc

Sources: Elkhonen Vogler, in Di goldene keyt (Tel Aviv) 28 (1957); Leyvik Khanukov, Literarishe eseyen (Literary essays) (New York, 1960), pp. 68-74

•

Many of Marc Chagall’s finest paintings feature Bella, his wife and muse, whom he continued to paint long after her death of an unknown illness at forty-nine. The couple first met by coincidence in Vitebsk, Belarus, their hometown, in the summer of 1909, when he was twenty-two and she was fourteen. The shock of a love at first sight, which grew to inspire great works, is famously recorded in Marc’s memoir My Life and in Bella’s published notebooks First Encounter. The excerpts here include each lover’s perspective on their meeting as well as an afterword written by Marc shortly after Bella’s death.

From Marc

I am at Thea’s, lying on the sofa in the consulting room of her father, a physician. I liked to stretch out that way near the window on that sofa covered with a black horsehair cloth, worn, with holes in several places.

The same sofa, undoubtedly, on which the doctor examined pregnant women and sick people