Marc Chagall
Chagall's home and studio in Passy during the 1930s, built around a large studio window. He left occupied France for New York in 1941.
4 villa Eugène-Manuel
Still standing
Outside only
Someone else
The Passy house with a large studio window that Marc Chagall took in the 1930s — twenty years and a world away from the unheated rotunda at La Ruche.
- 4 villa Eugène-Manuel, 75016 Paris
- Chagall's home and studio during the 1930s
The place, briefly
The distance between La Ruche and this address is the whole shape of Marc Chagall's middle life. In 1912 he was in an unheated wedge-shaped room in Vaugirard painting on bedsheets. By the 1930s he was an internationally collected artist living in a house on a private lane in Passy, with a studio built around a large window.
Between the two came Vitebsk, the Russian Revolution — in which he was briefly a regional commissar for the arts — Moscow theatre commissions, Berlin, and a return to France in 1923 that made him a French painter for the rest of his life.
The 1930s work is lighter and more confident than anything before it, and the studio window is a large part of why: for the first time he had proper north light and space to work at scale.
It ended badly. As a Jewish artist in occupied France he was in serious danger, and in 1941 he escaped to New York with the help of the American rescue operation run out of Marseille. He did not come back to live in Paris.
Key facts
- The 1930s
- A private lane in Passy, with a studio built around a large window
- Twenty years after the unheated studios of La Ruche
- He fled occupied France for New York in 1941
- Private — the lane is gated
Timeline
Chagall returns to France after years in Russia and Berlin.
He lives and works at villa Eugène-Manuel in Passy.
He escapes occupied France for New York.
On the map
Questions before you go
Can you see Chagall's Passy house?
Not really. Villa Eugène-Manuel is a short private lane and the house is not visible from the street beyond its entrance.
Why did Chagall leave France?
He was a Jewish artist in occupied France and in serious danger. He escaped to New York in 1941 with help from the American rescue effort operating out of Marseille.
People who knew this place
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