It is hard to be in this place and not have an emotional reaction. The colors on canvas are so vibrant, the themes so recognizable, the small details so impactful, that for anyone – art lover, scholar, or even casual observer – there is something to find that can easily create an intense experience.

But there is special significance here for me, and so my reaction has me smiling almost to the point of tears. You see, in Marc Chagall I have a bit of a kindred spirit, someone for whom Jewish identity is so central to a sense of being, but also for whom that religious consciousness and the state of the world around are often at odds. So here at France’s National Marc Chagall Museum in Nice, I find my reactions to be deeply emotional.

Marc Chagall was born in the Russian Empire in 1887, and while this is not an article about his life and career, his relationship with his traditional Jewish rural upbringing and the trauma of the time period that the world – and his country especially – was entering would shape his entire worldview and the art that came from it. During his almost 98 years of life, he would see two world wars, the overthrowing of his country’s ruler and the chaos that followed, and the near extermination of his people. He would experience personal grief when his wife died at the age of 29, and be attacked personally and professionally for being an outsider in his adopted country of France.

It was a hard life, one that saw the artist attain the highest possible acclaim and one that saw the man struggle with how to balance his belief system with the darkness of the world around him. The dichotomy, light and darkness, success and failure, peace and war, would be a constant theme.

The pinnacle of Marc Chagall’s professional success came in 1973 with the opening of this museum. It was the first French national museum to be dedicated to a still-living artist, an incredibly powerful tribute to what Chagall meant to France and to the art world, despite being attacked as a foreigner only a decade earlier when he was chosen to paint the ceiling of the Opera Garnier in Paris.

The museum, which Chagall was able to help design in every respect, began with a donation by the artist of a twelve canvas series called Biblical Messages. In it, he covers some of the most major themes of Genesis and Exodus, combining his constant love of the Bible – which he called “the greatest source of poetry of all time” – and a reckoning of the horrible experiences of the Jewish people. Painted in the 1960s originally for the Calvary Chapel in nearby Vence, these monumental paintings ended up not being used, so the museum’s construction was done with that series in mind, with one main room displaying all twelve, and a small side room to hold an additional five canvases of Chagall’s interpretation of the biblical Song of Songs.

The canvases are large, full of vibrant color, filled with complex scenes around the borders that only add to the energy of the central portions, and are incredibly powerful. Take this, one of my favorites, that depicts the story of creation. The dichotomy of light and darkness, of yellow and blue, is stark. Color emanating into the world from the sun spirals into the frame. People, angels, animals, and even knowledge make appearances.

But set around that sun, almost in the background, are small scenes showing the misery Jews would go through: being blamed for the death of Jesus, being portrayed as animals, hiding in basements, poverty in the shtetls of Eastern Europe.

This undertone of Jewish suffering is a constant one in both Marc Chagall’s works on display here, and his works elsewhere. It reminds us that even in the most upbeat of images – creation itself – the artist could never escape the events that took place around him and made him question his faith throughout his life.

Each canvas offers an emotional reaction. The expulsion from Eden with figures heading from vibrant golden plants toward a duller darkness evokes sadness.

The Exodus from Egypt comes with a wave of divine retribution (a literal wave) crashing down.

The deep blues of the flood give a sensation of the drowning of humanity, this one with a background of figures floating horizontally, mere shadows in the azure waters.

And the Song of Songs, done in bright pinks and reds, shows off the eroticism of this final book of the Hebrew Bible, a celebration of life again belied by harsher imagery at the margins.

For me, and for my struggle to balance the optimism that my own Jewish upbringing gave me with the realities of this world, it is overwhelming to see those same feelings painted out so clearly, to see the artist’s own emotional struggles depicted. I flow quickly between smiles and frowns as I discover new features of each canvas.

Biblical Message is not the only feature of the National Marc Chagall Museum, however. There is a small exhibit (closed when I visited) dedicated to the Opera Garnier and its 1963 painting, and a room hosting some of Marc Chagall’s colorful circus imagery, one of his lifelong fascinations.

Elsewhere one sees beautiful stained glass windows, something for which Marc Chagall was famous, designed specifically for this museum and its auditorium.

Visitors can also gaze fondly on a huge mosaic (Chagall was in his 80s so while he designed it, another did the assembly) of the prophet Elijah surrounded by the symbols of the zodiac.

But the major secondary focus of the National Marc Chagall Museum is the 1945 ballet production of Stravinsky’s The Firebird in New York. With merely months before opening, the production’s set and costume designer was fired, and Marc Chagall brought in. And while the ballet itself would be largely panned by critics, the sets and costumes were considered to be spectacular successes.

Here across three rooms, the museum houses the original artwork for the scenery, costumes, and even the curtain, all donated by Marc Chagall. One room presents each act of the show, providing an immersive experience for visitors who can walk through the plot via its characters and imagery.

The museum is small, and can easily be seen in only an hour or so, a bit more if one reads the descriptions (including English) of all of the works on display. But it is a powerful testament to a man who Picasso once called “the only painter left who understands what color is.”

More importantly, it is a display that even one who attains the highest levels of professional acclaim can struggle, that even those whose faith is central to their core beings can doubt, and even those who dedicate their lives to beauty can also see ugliness. That is my takeaway. And that is why this place, and this man, mean so much to me.

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