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The year when Ferenczy painted "Picnic in May" was a turning point in his life: he was appointed teacher at the School of Decorative Arts and from this time onwards, he spent most of his time in Budapest. The new life style was apparent in his art, too. Besides "Picnic in May", there were no other major pictures to mark the year. Valér Ferenczy, Károly's son, recalls the following on how it was born: "... my father painted the scene from the window of our home in Nagybánya when kindergarten girls in their best white clothes passed our house in twos. The foreground was our garden, and the background Kereszthegy." Figures in the splendid landscape are staffage-life, the only important object is nature in its pride. The square of the picture is divided horizontally by the road, path and the border of forest and meadow, with the cone-like mountain in the background. Above the countryside, there are fluffy clouds in the summer sky.
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