elijah-and-the-widow-of-zarephath_71628_product
elijah-and-the-widow-of-zarephath_71628_product elijah-and-the-widow-of-zarephath-71628-2-1 elijah-and-the-widow-of-zarephath-71628-3-1 elijah-and-the-widow-of-zarephath-71628-4-1

Elijah and the widow of Zarephath

Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath, Hand-Colored Etching on Arches, c.1958, 21.3" x 15.4",  #50/100

From Chagall's Bible Series

"Ever since my earliest youth, I have been fascinated with the Bible. I have always believed that it is the greatest source of poetry of all time… I have sought its reflection in life and art. The Bible is life, an echo of nature, and this is the secret I have endeavored to transmit." – Marc Chagall

The Prophet Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath illustrates the biblical story of the encounter between prophet Elijah and a widow gathering sticks when he arrives at the town of Zarephath. Elijah asks her for a piece of bread, and the destitute widow invites him to her home where she uses her last bit of flour and oil to bake for him. The prophet then blesses the woman and her child, and assures them that their supplies of flour and oil will never be diminished. Shortly thereafter the son dies, but because of Elijah’s fervent prayers, God returned the boy to life. The story was often interpreted as an Old Testament prefiguration of the passion and sacrifice of Christ. The son, who clutches a bundle of firewood, pre-shadowed Christ carrying the cross, and because he was later brought back from the dead, he was seen as a prefiguration of the resurrected Christ.

SKU: M-CHAG-125001 Artist: Tag:
Nicole Wolff
Gallery Director

Marc Chagall (born Moishe Shagal; 1887 – 1985) was a Russian-born French artist. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.

 

Born in modern-day Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire, he was of Belarusian Jewish origin. 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 Europe and 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 1923.

 

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 Art Institute of Chicago and the Jerusalem Windows in Israel. He also did large-scale paintings, including part of the ceiling of the Paris Opéra.

 

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." "When Matisse dies," Pablo Picasso remarked in the 1950s, "Chagall will be the only painter left who understands what colour really is".