Painter. Orlai Petrics who wanted to become a writer, was a pupil of Jakab Marastoni in 1846 and attended F. Waldmüller's school in Vienna from 1847. He painted "King István and the assassin", his first picture in the winter of 1847. In his lithographs he portrayed experiences during the war of independence. He painted his last Petőfi-portrait in Mezőberény. He studied at Kaulbach in Munich from 1850. He painted "The Corpse of Louis II" in 1851, a decade before Bertalan Székely. Later he lived on painting portraits in Debrecen.

After a short stay in Vienna, he painted several portraits, genre pictures and historic compositions ("Felicián Zách", "Béla, the Blind", "The Murder of Martinozzi", "Czillei and Hunyadi", "The National Assembly of Ónod", etc.). With the topic of the picture, "Milton Dictates his Daughter 'Paradise Lost'", he preceded Munkácsy by decades. He illustrated Petőfi's poems. Orlai Petrics, an artist who portrayed national targets on purpose became a significant figure of the reform age.