Samu Börtsök confessed that he rather attended the lectures of the art historian Zsolt Beöthy and the aesthete Alexander Bernát, than the Roman law. After being a student at the department of law for one and a half-year, he was healed of his depression by the Nagybánya art school, which he attended between 1902 and 1908. In the same time, he was a student of Ferenczy's private school in Budapest and made short study visits to Rome, Munich, and Vienna. Beginning with 1908, Nagybánya became his permanent residence. He was among the first ones to receive an atelier at the colony. In 1911, he became the managing director of the newly founded Nagybánya Painter's Association (NPA). It was him, who helped István Réti in redacting the catalogue of the jubilee exhibition in 1912. On the request of István Réti, he gathered the biographical dates of the members of the art colony and made them confess their ars poetica in 1922.

Börtsök was fighting his illness from an early age. As a hussar volunteer, he was thrown off his horse, which stepped on his stomach. His weak health had an influence on his entire way of life. When he recovered, during his shorter or longer periods of well being, he was painting with a grown intensity. He was constantly inspired by his fruit-garden, which looked onto the Liget (the park) from the Virághegy. The meadows from nearby, the hills and the surroundings of Nagybánya bordered by the Kereszthegy (Cross Mountain) served as sources of inspiration as well. The bad financial position of his family also forced him to work vary hard and to be very productive.

He could sell his paintings because one could see from a distance that his paintings had all the superficial characteristics of the Nagybánya art colony. Anyway, he never managed to defeat the temptation of epigonism. Even his former mentor, Károly Ferenczy, was harshly critical on him. Due to his favourite motifs, the epithet of the small masters of Nagybánya (the "painter of the Haystacks") suits him perfectly. He noted down the followings a few days before his death: "It was written about me that I rendered the Sunday of the nature. There is a lot of truth in this, because the contemplation of nature gives birth to a solemn sensation in me and the traces of this must appear in my pictures as well." (Művészeti Szalon, 1931/7-8.).

He was defeated by his tuberculosis in the end. His wife, Gizella Rhédey organized exhibitions from his paintings to be able to pay the handling charges in the poverty of the economic crisis.