DEÁK-ÉBNER, Lajos
(1850, Pest - 1934, Budapest)

Returning Harvesters

1881
Oil on canvas, 94,5 x 131 cm
Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Deák-Ébner painted this picture when he visited Szolnok once a year during his stay in Paris and tried to make the experience he had collected abroad useful for Hungarian painting.

Deák-Ébner never became a follower of impressionism but he applied some elements of plein air painting. He applied the delicate naturalism of Bastien-Lapage, a significant painter of the age, to soften colours, but he used pearly greys and transparent earth-colours. He prepared a lot of sketches for the scene which he wanted to make airy.

The female figure with sheaves in the apron might as well be a symbol of harvest. The picture reflects the atmosphere of returning home: it is a snapshot, a pleasant scene which tells the spectator much, the approaching night-fall is genuine and confidential. If someone has witnessed a scene like this, he knows that artfulness, spontaneous beauty, self-conceit and coquetry are present in characters of village life. Other genre-figures are not stage-like characters of the scene, they are all flesh and blood figures: e.g. a woman with the hands on her hips, who is arguing with her husband or figures of women who are frightening a dog away with stones or gazing from the river-bank.


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