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"I want to paint everyone who made this small country great which suffered a lot vicisstitudes," wrote Rippl-Rónai to Lajos Ernst in 1923. This is why he painted portraits of Mihály Babits, Ernő Osváth, Zsigmond Móricz, Lőrincz Szabó, Frigyes Karinthy, Alaldár Schöpflin and Miksa Fenyő. Although it cannot be considered as a next item of the series, the portrait was painted in less than a year, as if to crown his late period.
"He sat down full of curiosity in front of the mirror to observe how age had changed him ... An old man looked back from the mirror, the moustache and the hair turned white, a red cap tilted on the one side and a scarf of the same colour around the neck. He is looking at us seriously, he is wearing a winter coat. He looks gravely at us from under his cap over the eyes. Defiance of young age has not disappeared from his face. This is how a man faces destiny who examined his conscience, who is aware of the fact that he defied mortality in his way because he managed to make it more beautiful and richer." (Artúr Elek)
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