Reflective Resources
- Dec 28, 2022
- 2 min read

Stained glass windows by Marc Chagall at Tudely

I was lucky enough to visit All Saints' Church in Tudeley, Kent, England in January 2020; the only church in the world that has all its windows in stained glass designed by Marc Chagall.

Marc Chagall, was a naturalized French Jewish painter, whose real name is Moïshe Zakharovich Shagalov. He was born on July 7, 1887 in Vitebsk, White Russia, into a Hasidic Jewish family, whose life was punctuated by the ritual time of religious practice. 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. He died on March 28, 1985 in Saint-Paul de Vence.

Marc Chagall was commissioned to design a stained glass window for the church in Kent after Sarah, the daughter of Sir Henry and Lady D'Avigdor-Goldsmid, who owned nearby Somerhill House was drowned in a sailing accident off Rye, East Sussex on 19 September 1963.

When Chagall arrived for the dedication of the east window in 1967, and saw the church for the first time, he exclaimed "C'est magnifique! Je les ferai tous!" ("It's magnificent! I will do them all!") Over the next ten years Chagall designed the remaining eleven windows in watercolour; they were made in collaboration with the glassworker Charles Marq in his workshop at Reims in northern France.