Marc Chagall (1887–1985) and Bella Rosenfeld Chagall (1895–1944) were married in July 1915, and their only child, Ida, was born the following year. The appearance of mother and daughter in works such as Bella and Ida by the Window (1917) and several of Marc’s “Lovers” paintings shows the domestic joy amid the chaos of World War I. When Bella died of a viral infection, the grieving Chagall kept her notebook and illustrated it for the next twenty years, surrounding Bella’s writings with colorful and moving posthumous portraits of the two of them together.
© Archives Marc et Ida Chagall, Paris.
WORKS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN NARRATIVE:
- The First Meeting, a memoir, in Stories of the Week: 2015–2016