The range of emotive and whimsical figures and motifs in Chagall's work led André Breton to say that he alone had returned metaphor triumphantly to modern painting. Some of the otherworldly, supernatural touches in his paintings were said to prefigure surrealism.

Selected Marc Chagall Paintings. A Wheatfield on a Summers Afternoon. Adam and Eve. Autumn in the Village. The Blue Face. Bridges over the Seine. Burning House. Cemetery Gate. Clowns at night. The Three Candles with Circles and Goat. Cow with Parasol. Equestrienne. Easter. Four Seasons. Fruits and Flowers.

The Birthday, 1887 by Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall called "love" the primary color of his paintings. The central source of the love in his life was his wife, Bella. They met when Bella was a teenager in their home town of Vitebsk, Belarus.

During the winter of 1917-18, soon after painting the Vitebsk landscapes, Chagall created three of his most famous figurative compositions: Over the Town, and The Promenade. They too were painted in Vitebsk, and show that exuberant zest for living which went hand in hand with the new phase of artistic accomplishment he had achieved.

The Juggler, 1943 - by Marc Chagall. The Juggler is a major picture of the American war years. A very serious and mystical painting in the full sense of the word, it is filled with a personal mythology which avoids any literary symbolism.

White Crucifixion revealed nostalgia for 14th-century Italian art, and displayed an authentic coloristic value. This painting has thematic ties to Renaissance religious painting, especially the works by Michelangelo, but it also carries references to The Raising of the Cross by Rembrandt.

Over Vitebsk, 1913 by Marc Chagall. Over Vitebsk belongs to a large series of works that the artist began after his return to his hometown in June 1914, which take as their subject an over-life-size, elderly beggar floating above the snow-laden rooftops of Vitebsk. The painting plays on the Yiddish expression for a beggar moving from door to ...

It combines Biblical and Torah lore with the modern world and with Chagall's personal symbolism in a juxtaposition of images that attempt to summarize the many experiences the artist had over the course of his work on the painting.

The Fiddler, 1913 by Marc Chagall. Marc Chagall's The Fiddler is an oil painting completed in 1913 while the artist was established in France. The quasi-cubist painting illustrates a combination of Russian and French art. Executed in a high contrast colors, the painting is a representation of a fiddler in Chagall's village, Vitebsk.

Golgotha, 1912 - by Marc Chagall. Having explored the construction of the picture, the painter could feel free to develop the colored crystal of the surface in as rich and meaningful a way as possible.