Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a Jewish-Russian modernist artist who developed his distinct visual style while studying art with Leon Bakst in Saint-Petersburg. As the eldest of nine children, his paintings often focus on images from his childhood. At the age of 23, Chagall moved to Paris for four years where he began to paint with bold, bright colors in a style evoking fantasy, nostalgia, and religion. During this time, Chagall associated with artists such as Robert Delaunay, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Fernand Leger, witnessing the emergence of fauvist and cubist styles which would come to influence his approach to his art. While scenes of his native Vitebsk consumed his memory and dreams, Chagall also took to depicting Parisian scenes, in particular the Eiffel Tower.

Much of Chagall�s work also includes Jewish imagery and motifs. The artist held a one-man show in Berlin shortly before the outbreak of World War I, after which he moved to Russia. In 1917, Chagall was appointed Commissar for Fine Arts in Vitebsk and then director of the Free Academy of Art. Chagall returned permanently France in 1923, though he spent the years of World War II in New York. Chagall worked in several mediums - painting, stained glass, tapestries, prints, and even stage sets - throughout his career and his work has been exhibited in galleries and museums all over the world, to include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Royal Academy in London. He is one of the few artists to have exhibited works in the Louvre during his lifetime.