ååDear reader, a question. Who connects the following event and places: a fatal sailing accident off the coast of Rye, a parish church in the Kent countryside, a Sussex cathedral and the Paris Opera House?
In 1963, twenty one year old Sarah d’ Avigdor drowned when her sailing boat capsized in Rye Bay. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Henry d’Avigdor Goldsmid, MP. The family seat, a large Jacobean manor house in a 5,000 acre estate, was just up the road from All Saints Church, Tudeley–cum-Capel, near Tonbridge, Kent.
Sarah, her mother and younger sister were admirers of contemporary art and attracted to the colourful works of the Russian-French artist Marc Chagall
(1887 – 1985). At an exhibition at the Louvre in 1961 they particularly admired Chagall’s stained glass window designs for a Jerusalem synagogue.
In Memoriam to Sarah, Chagall was commissioned to produce a design for the east window (behind the altar) of Tudeley church where Sarah’s mother and sister worshipped. When Chagall arrived at Tudeley in 1967 for the installation he was so impressed with the unique beauty of the work within the austere setting of the church he decided to produce designs for the other eleven windows, completed just before his death eighteen years later.
The commemoration to Sarah is typical of Chagall’s genre, a colourful world of magic and myth, of strange creatures, miraculous events, floating beings and abstract shapes. The window bathes the chancel in luscious blue light. Abstract forms are intermingled with fauna and angels. Sarah is engulfed by waves before rising to heaven, ascending Jacob’s ladder and riding a red horse into Jesus’ waiting arms.
Controversially, four chancel Victorian memorial stained glass panels were removed to make way for the Chagall replacements. These four are now in the vestry, artfully displayed backlit. The only other Chagall glass window in Britain is in Chichester Cathedral, Sussex.
A church has existed at Tudeley since the seventh century but the present building dates mainly from the eighteenth century. The exterior’s plainness belies the gorgeous kaleidoscope of colour to the interior created by Chagall’s stained glass panels. Except for the east window dedicated to Sarah d’ Avigdor, each panel is an abstraction of nature playfully interposed with angelic figures, animals and birds. Most windows have the advantage of being viewed at eye level.
Sarah’s father was Jewish, her mother Anglican and Chagall proved an inspired choice. Chagall was a Jew but included Christian images in many of his works. He believed all the major faiths worshipped the same God, religious dogma responsible for dividing the faiths.
Jews were aggressively persecuted in Tsarist Russia with social restrictions and regular violence. In 1910 Chagall managed to emigrate to Paris and in 1937 became a naturalised French citizen. He fled to America to escape the Nazi’s afterwards returning to his beloved Paris. In 1964 he was commissioned to paint the centrepiece roundel on the auditorium ceiling of the Paris Opera house.
Tudeley church (TN11 0NZ) is open to visit, best on a bright sunny day to fully experience the glorious colours of these original masterpieces.
