Marc Chagall was a Belorussian-born French artist whose work included painting, printmaking and theatre designs. He studied art in St. Petersburg and, funded by a St. Petersburg patron, moved to Paris in 1910.  Influenced by poets like Guillaume Apollinaire and by painters like Chaim Soutine, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger, Chagall synthesized various approaches to art such as Expressionism, Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism to become a member of the first generation of European modernists.

The Village, from the middle of Chagall’s career and one of his most expressive ceramic murals, freely associates motifs that recur in his art and illustrate his life-long love of poetic, folkloric fantasy. Across the middle of the painting is a row of village houses and a church, invoking Chagall’s early life in Vitebsk in present-day Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Over the village floats a large male figure in peasant garb, holding a hatchet, perhaps symbolic of the sacrifice of an animal. In the four corners are a girl with a bowl and a goat, a basket of flowers, a glowing crescent moon, and more flowers. The composition is loosely painted in soft blues and grays against a muted background that allows the warm highlights of the terracotta ground to emerge. The overall mood is dreamlike, mystical, and full of nostalgia.