Bella Chagall Died in the Forest Up the Road

Bella Chagall Passes Familiar Icons On Her Way to Die at Tupper Lake Hospital 2020. Acrylic on canvas, 36 x 24” (Private collection of R.O. and S.H. of Indianapolis)

Marc and Bella Chagall spent part of the summer of 1944 in the Adirondacks, at the Evergreen Hotel in Cranberry Lake, NY. This was and is heavy duty, isolated north country, WASP-ish in the first degree, and during World War II, and today would welcome broken English (depending on which color is breaking it) like Tojo on a trout lake.
The Chagalls came up from New York City. Marc made paintings (he used an unfinished room in the hotel as a studio), and Bella began editing her memoir. She contracted strep throat and died from the infection at Tupper Lake hospital.
Whenever I despair about being an artist in a Walmart wasteland, I think on the Chagalls braving the world as Russian Jewish immigrants during an era of fascism everywhere.
This summer Rose and I will take the 90 minute drive out to where the Evergreen Hotel once stood to pay homage to a great painter. We’ll walk and talk around Cranberry Lake musing over which stories will carry over to the imaginations of our descendants. Will my paintings survive the coming wars of the idiot in-groups?

The story is recounted in a 2019 Adirondack Life article by Lisa Breman.