Genre Painting in the Hungarian National Gallery

Fülszöveg

National painting in Hungary took shape relatively late, towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. Artists who had been educated at home or who had returned froin foreign academies were attempting with feverish speed to introduce at home the established forms of Euro-pean painting, among them genre painting. Their aims coincided with the desires of the middle-class intel-ligentsia, which was glad to see the depiction of characteristic figures and situations of village and country, apart from the various events from its own life. During the second half of the nineteenth century genre painting developed in two directions. In addition to the narrative, slightly ironic or almost idyllic representa-tions, there were the paintings of Mihály Munkácsy, Mihály Zichy and others with a more serious message. lt was in this period, in 1873, that the work which became themilestone in the history of Hungárián art was produced, Pál Szinyei Merse's Picnic in May. Genre painting became an... Tovább

Fülszöveg

National painting in Hungary took shape relatively late, towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. Artists who had been educated at home or who had returned froin foreign academies were attempting with feverish speed to introduce at home the established forms of Euro-pean painting, among them genre painting. Their aims coincided with the desires of the middle-class intel-ligentsia, which was glad to see the depiction of characteristic figures and situations of village and country, apart from the various events from its own life. During the second half of the nineteenth century genre painting developed in two directions. In addition to the narrative, slightly ironic or almost idyllic representa-tions, there were the paintings of Mihály Munkácsy, Mihály Zichy and others with a more serious message. lt was in this period, in 1873, that the work which became themilestone in the history of Hungárián art was produced, Pál Szinyei Merse's Picnic in May. Genre painting became an integrál part of Hungárián painting. Its development in the twentieth century is as varied as that of the ebul-lient art itself. Tt ranges from Lajos Gulácsy's works depicting a world-that-never-was to the peasant themes of Adolf Fényes and János Tornyai, and the paintings of Gyula Derko-vits, which represent the life of the úrban proletariat.
The study of Magdolna B. Supka, keeper in the Hungárián National Gallery, presents the development and most representative creators of Hungárián genre painting. Vissza