FIALKA, Olga
(1848, Theresienstadt - 1930, Nagybánya)

The Fialka Family

1874
Oil on canvas, 41 x 45,3 cm
Ferenczy Museum, Szentendre

The artist depicts her family in a simple, bourgeois interior in the act of drinking coffee. The head of the table is reserved for the mother, Caroline, and beside her stands Milada von Fialka. One of the two male family members is perhaps Károly Fialka. Hiding in the background in another room is Olga herself, painting. The picture is a combination of the common interior genre and the group portrait. However what distinguishes this painting from contemporary genre painting is that the interrelation of the figures comes not from a punch-lined story, but from everyday conversation and the same aspect distinguishes the picture from the rigid setting of additive group portraits. It is as if the artist had made a snapshot of an everyday scene. Nevertheless, the setting of the figures, the distribution of lights and the lighter and darker shades of colours lend a strong internal rhythm to the composition and thus bring it closer to the concept of academic painting.


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