SZEMLÉR, Mihály
(1833, Pest - 1904, Budapest)



Painter, graphic artist. He was the first master and indeed the founder of Hungarian genre painting in the popular vein. His sound observation and draughtsmanship surpassed that of many of his contemporaries.

He became a Hungarien soldier as a youth in 1848, and was captured by the Austrians. He studied as a painter of historical pictures, and for thirty-two years taught art in a secondary shool in Pest. He fulfilled his ambition as a painter of historical scenes with the lithographs he made from 1860 onwards. These, and the prints that appeared as supplements in "Családi Kör" (Family Circle) brought him success and fame, and the public brought up on folk plays and tales snapped them up. His excellent satires on the Pest petty-bourgeoisie, the half-gentry, half-bourgeoisie of the Pest coffee houses, were published in the periodical "Ország Világ" (Country and World) and other magazines. He and Jankó were the two great chroniclers of the age.



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