The origin of the genre historical painting is rooted in the political and social movements of the 19th century, and it continued to remain sensitive to public events. It assumed real social significance in countries where the presence of some foreign power placed obstacles in the path leading to national independence. The 19th century was the time of the emergence of nation states throughout Europe, and in Hungary this process went hand in hand with the growth of a bourgeois society centred on the 1848/49 Revolution. Though its origins reach back to the late 18th century, historical painting was in full flower in the second half of the 19th century in Hungary when, in the decades after the defeat of the 1848/49 Revolution, it grew into an effective supporter of national resistance, with the declared aim of influencing the public by emotional means. This lent it major significance in the development and shaping of national consciousness in the country.
Alongside the portrayal of current events, the main source of subjects was the national past, which was conjured up symbolically in the paintings, whether they treated some event or an outstanding personality. They transmitted messages that were valid at the time of painting. In cases of a fortunate encounter of theme and style, the works assumed general validity, expressing a moral and philosophical message that went beyond mere timeliness.
The monumental work by Peter Krafft (1780-1856): Zrínyi's Sortie, dated 1825 provides a good introduction to the genre. The scene is the sortie of Count Miklós Zrínyi and his men, the heroic defenders of the castle of Szigetvár, against the besieging Turks in 1566, in which Zrínyi lost his life. The painting had been commissioned by the Vienna Court, with the intention of stressing the duty of Hungarians to defend the House of Hapsburg even at the cost of their lives. But the warm reception given to the canvas and the controversy it sparked off showed that, willy-nilly it boosted national consciousness.
Some works by Hungarian painters trained in Vienna mark the beginnings of historical painting in Hungary. The first forty years of the 19th century only saw a few canvases with historical themes, and even those were of an illustrative character, fairly naive and with graphic rendering, as for instance the romantic painting by Tivadar Alconiere (1797-1865), Széchenyi at the Iron Gate (1831), with the figure of the great politician and statesman of the Reform Age, Count István Széchenyi. The works of the 1840s are still marked by a neoclassical narrative character and the predominance of graphic elements. These include János Hunyadi after the Battle of Rigómező (1841) by Bálint Kiss (1802-1868), which relates an episode in the life of the famous Hungarian hero of the Turkish wars, where he fights off robbers. Another painting by Kiss, János Jabloncai Pethes Says Farewell to his Daughter (1846), reveals a similar approach. Its theme, the fate of a preacher condemned to the galleys for his principles, truly moved the public of the time.
Relatively few oils have rendered events of the 1848/49 Revolution. These include Táncsics in Prison (c. 1848) by Károly Jakobey (1825-1891), and Grieving Hungarian Soldier (1850) by Ferenc Újházy (1827-1921).
The 1850s saw the emergence of a new master of historical painting: Mór Than (1828-1899). Than first made his name in Vienna, and his paintings in warm, ruddy tones, exhibit an exquisite graphic attainment. King Imre Captures his Rebellious Brother, Endre (1857) depicts a moment in the 13th-century struggles for power. The Capture of Lőrincz Nyári and Lajos Pekry (1853) recalls the fate of the two heroic castellans who lost their lives defending Szolnok Castle against the Turks. Here the more animated composition and more effective means already reflect the spirit of Romanticism. The same holds true for Felicián Zách (1853), a work by Soma Orlai Petrich (1822-1880). Profound character portrayal and emotional tension are characteristic of a subject which presents the story of a 14th-century nobleman who rebelled against King Caroberto to avenge a grave personal offence.
The most outstanding Hungarian historical painter was Viktor Madarász. His canvases couple national subjects with dramatic tension and awhite-hotemotional heat. His compositional solutions and intensive palette bear out the influence of French Romanticism, and the perfect harmony of theme and style raises his pieces to the forefront of European historical painting. The Bewailing of László Hunyadi (1859) is perhaps Madarász's chef-d'oeuvre. It renders, with a concise style of a ballad, the tragic fate of the son of the great national hero János Hunyadi, who was beheaded at the orders of the jealous young king. The contrast of dark and light colours, the gleam filtering through the chapel window, and the pale light of the two candles falling on the body, all express mourning, grief and pain. The painting became the symbol of the nation's tragedy after the defeat of the 1848/49 Revolution, and had a profound effect on the contemporary Hungarian and French public alike. In 1860 the canvas was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Salon.
The idea of rebellion and opposition to the oppressing power appears in several other Madarász paintings as well, as for instance in Felicián Zách (1858) and Ilona Zrínyi before the Magistrate (1859). The latter renders the scene of Ilona Zrínyi facing her judges fearlessly after she defended the castle of Munkács for three years heroically and was only forced to surrender because betrayed. Péter Zrínyi and Kristóf Frangepán in Prison at Wiener Neustadt (1864) portrays the last minutes before their execution of two of the participants in the plot against the Hapsburg emperor, which was exposed in 1670. The scene is marked by psychological subtlety and a lavish use of colour. The profound grief over the cruel reprisal of the peasant rising led by György Dózsa in 1514 is rendered expressively in the dramatic composition of The People of Dózsa (1868). Dobozi (1868) tackles the story of a couple escaping into death when pursued by the Turks. It has become a symbol of marital fidelity and self-sacrifice. The specific colour effects and the emphasis on the tense moment of escape reveal the influence of French Romanticism most expressly among all of Madarász's canvases.
Bertalan Székely (1835-1910), the other outstanding figure in Hungarian historical painting alongside Viktor Madarász, stands forthe more lyrical aspects of Romanticism, using warmer tones. Székely was the staunchest exponent of the idea of national independence. To him a historical subject meant the possibility to create Hungarian national art. At the time of Absolutism, his paintings carried a manifold symbolic message. He wished to keep alive the memory of a past glory as a means of mourning, consolation and mobilisation for new struggles. Mourning over the suppressed national independence found expression in the gloomy, baleful mood of The Discovery of the Body of King Louis II (1860), which renders the finding of the body of the Hungarian king who drowned after the Battle of Mohács against the Turks in 1526. His Mihály Dobozi and his Wife (1861) and The Women of Eger (1867) have become object lessons in patriotic self-sacrifice. Both recall the Turkish wars, the first in another treatment of the subject discussed already, while The Women of Eger relates the heroic defence of Eger Castle in 1552, and by so doing urges for patriotic rallying and resistance. His King Ladislav V and Czillei (1870) expresses disappointment over, and criticism of, the Ausgleich, the 1867 Compromise with the Hapsburgs. The young king, who reigned in the time of the Hunyadis, is revelling with his tyrannous guardian, giving no thought to his country and people - a scene rendered with a wonderful picturesqueness, abounding in details.
The idea of national independence also inspired Sándor Wagner (1838-1919) in presenting his Titusz Dugovics (1859). It renders the moment of self-sacrifice of the hero of the siege of Belgrade, while his Queen Isabella's Farewell to Transylvania (1863) is an example of Romantic lyricism. A similarly lyrical tone can be sensed in the compositions of Sándor Liezen-Mayer (1839-1898), with more intimate subjects and a more delicate colour range; two sketches stand pre-eminent: Queens Maria and Elizabeth at the Grave of King Louis the Great (1862) and the extremely pictorial Maria Theresa Feeds the Child of a Beggar Woman (1867). The main work of his later years, St Elizabeth of Hungary (1882), already shows marks of fatigue.
The Compromise brought about a new political situation, which involved new tasks and goals for historical painting as well. Painters were expected to produce works whose message justifies the Compromise, and they tried to look for events in the past too that might have served this end. A celebrated master of this school was Gyula Benczúr (1844-1920). Early in his life the idea of the 1848/49 Revolution still occupied him and it was in this spirit he painted The Farewell of László Hunyadi (1865) and The Capture of Ferenc Rákóczi II (1869). (Prince Rákóczi was the leader of an insurrection against the Austrians in the early 18th century.) But his principal works already propagated the idea of the new Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Baptism of Vajk (1875) presents the scene of the baptism of the first Hungarian king and his coronation as Stephen I, which signified Hungarian statehood, and membership of the Western Christian world. This is Benczúr's first work in which his brilliant painterly skills fully prevail. His true faculties show up in the portrayals of the great Hungarian Renaissance King Matthias even more fully than in his spectacular, large compositions. These include the sketches Matthias and Holubar and King Matthias among his Artists (both after 1902), which he executed in preparation for the frescoes of the Hunyadi Room - now destroyed - in Buda Castle.
We conclude the introduction of Hungarian historical painting by the most monumental and most representative painting of the genre, Benczúr's Buda Castle Recaptured (1896). The canvas renders the entry in Buda Castle of the Imperial and Hungarian troops led by Charles de Lorraine and the killing of the last Buda pasha. The event marked the end of the country's 150 years long Turkish occupation. The external pomp and glamour in the canvas do not suppress Benczúr's painterly merits, his exquisite sense of composition, masterly handling of colour and technical bravura. He was working for ten years on the painting and it became, as a spectacular symbol of Habsburg glory, the paramount pride at the celebrations marking a thousand years since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the 9th century.
