Styles:

Artist's Colonies

Landscape Painting

Man has always observed and portrayed nature surrounding them since the earliest of times, for a long time, however, attention was focused on recording few details in a symbolic way. Since the Hellenistic period walls of houses were decorated with landscapes. Landscapes with perspective appeared for the first time in panel pictures of Hubert and Jan van Eyk in the 15th century to be continued only a hundred years later. Realistic landscapes in the modern sense were born in the Netherlands of the 17th century, while idealistic landscape painting was marked by French masters, e.g. Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin who worked in Rome. Hungarian followers of both styles had a significant role in establishing landscape painting in Hungary in the 19th century as the genre did not exist previously. Enlightenment at the turn of the 18th century represented priority of experience and observation. Landscapes with topographically exact details helped natural sciences. Unemotional and detailed description of nature was retained by veduta artists and landscape painters, as is the case in the majority of Károly Lajos Libay's pictures (e.g. Regensburg, 1849), or early drawings and pictures of Károly Markó the Elder from the period of 1820-30 (e.g. Visegrád, 1826-30). Another genre of classicism was the ideal landscape which was popular even in mid 19th century as represented by Károly Markó the Elder and his followers (e.g. Károly Markó: Fishermen, 1851).

Romanticism gaining power rapidly against cold rationalism of classicism was a significant factor in Hungarian art during the 19th century. Károly Kisfaludy, its earliest representative, painted passionate and dynamic pictures of storms at sea, the dramatic clash of elements (Maritime Peril, 1820s) as early as 1822, i.e. at the same time as French romanticism appeared. His approach is related to heroic landscapes of Northern artists emphasising the threatening power of nature rather than to sentimental Hungarian romanticist landscape painting at later times.

More and more accurate observations of nature by romantic artists in search of effective composition, contrasts of light and sensitivity to changes in the atmosphere (Sándor Brodszky: Storm at Balaton, c. 1870; Károly Lotz: Stud in a Thunderstorm, 1862; Károly Lotz: Twilight, 1870) brought about a change in landscape painting, thus naturalistic and realistic landscape painting had been born by the late 19th century. Watercolours of Miklós Barabás, a young artist at the time, portraying landscapes in Italy (Lago Maggiore, 1834, etc.) had anticipated it in the 1830s, i.e. at the prime of romanticism. During his stay in Venice, his art was not only influenced by local colorist traditions, but he picked up the English technique of painting water colours from a Scottish friend, a painter himself, which, in its turn, influenced novel trends in French art.

Bright painting which had been spreading from the 1860s meant a major blow on the century long monopoly of artificial lighting typical of studios. The stiff and idealising style restricted by rules of academic composition was no longer suitable for expressing freedom recently discovered. Artists observed nature and life not as mere outsiders, their personal experiences and environment became more important: they looked at the present rather than the past. The immanent character of his art outgrows subject matters, the same way as realism outgrows romanticism, to develop into impressionism. The hierarchy of art genres gradually underwent a change and landscape took over the leading role.

One of the most significant episode of Hungarian realist landscape painting is represented by the life-work of László Paál which ended with tragic suddenness. Portraying nature did not only mean objective registration of details carefully observed but something more and shocking: the projection of his feelings to landscape (e.g. Morning in the Forest, 1875). His emotionally charged art ranks him one of the best representatives of the Barbizon school. Mihály Munkácsy made his name in several genres. His landscapes (e.g. Park in Colpach, 1886)over fifty in number constitute a most interesting trend in his life-work: the dramatic nature of his pictures involving figures is present in landscapes, too.

Realist landscape painting of Mihály Munkácsy and László Paál which they had developed in France failed to influence the art of painters in Hungary for the time being, neither found works of Károly Lotz and Bertalan Székely of a similar character followers. The style of Pál Szinyei Merse, fresh and natural, was even less appreciated. The daring originality of sketches (pl. The Swing, 1869; Mallows, 1868-69) indicate that he discovered the significance of complementary and contrasting colours, and values indicating richness of colour on his own. Thus, he found the path leading to plein-air and impressionism which meant that he had to go the way more and more solitarily as he was the first in Central Europe to have discovered these styles.

Strong colours of Szinyei Merse were still appreciated for a long time. The novel style of portraying nature, however, became more and more general in Hungarian exhibitions which was especially due to intimate landscape painting of Géza Mészöly (e.g. End of Village, 1875). Mysterious visions of László Mednyánszky were first exhibited in the late 1870s. His landscapes, poems of nature, were full of exciting and individual ideas arising from his wish to search for and express the smallest recesses of the countryside (e.g. View of Dunajec, c. 1893). His landscapes with hectic brushwork reflecting restlessness of the mind anticipated unique expressiveness of expressionism.

Art schools had a major role in landscape painting becoming richer. Groups of artists settled down in nearly all regions of Europe in the late 19th century establishing, in their turn, art schools around small towns or villages with beautiful sites. They inevitably became cradles of plein-air as artists painted pictures of landscapes right on the spot. The first art school to start the new style was Barbizon attracting László Paál and László Mednyánszky there. The first spontaneous art school in Hungary was established in Szolnok to be followed by the art school of Nagybánya (1896) which had a decisive role in Hungarian painting for the next 50 years to come. Károly Ferenczy and Béla Iványi Grünwald, the best of the Nagybánya school, brought the trend which Pál Szinyei Merse started, to perfection and became impressionists approaching post-impressionism. József Koszta and János Tornyai, belonging to the painters of the Great Plain, produced suggestive oeuvres of great drama following the style of Munkácsy in an individual, yet unmistakable way.

Synthetic way of observation had an important role in modern art, present in the works of Károly Ferenczy, too. Artists, who were deliberately searching for major connections behind eventuality of nature made their way to post-impressionism and styles following it which fundamentally changed their relationship to nature, and, thus, to landscapes. For however short a time, Nagybánya had a collective task in this respect, too: neos found their style in Nagybánya and it was in fact Nagybánya where they returned to later: their debates and movement to reform art animated Hungarian art life.

Of Hungarian avant-garde approaching expressionism, József Nemes Lampérth (e.g. Landscape, 1917) and János Mattis Teutsch (e.g. Landscape, 1910s) are to be mentioned with respect to their attitude to nature. Both members of the activist movement around Lajos Kassák, they did not merely imitate nature or create a poetic atmosphere: only inner laws of autonomous visual world were asserted. Landscape painting reached its outermost point: what was achieved by abstraction meant the denial of landscape.

Post-impressionism had several solitary artists in Hungary. Landscapes of József Rippl-Rónai represented an interesting way of decorative composition (e.g. Cemetery at the Great Hungarian Plain, 1894). In the art of Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka, landscapes had complex contents and a more important role than in the case of any artist of the period (e.g. Roman Bridge at Mostar, 1903). Lajos Gulácsy was in search of a poetic world of imagination over reality, thus becoming a Hungarian forerunner of surrealism.

Between the two world wars, richness of Hungarian landscape was the main source of inspiration for a lot of pictures: Lake Balaton with its humid air appeared in symphonies of light in pictures (e.g. Echo, 1936) of József Egry, the Danube-bend in harmony of colours full of gentle poesis in pictures (pl. Landscape at Zebegény, 1935-36) of István Szőnyi, or Szentendre inspired Jenő Barcsay, the puritan master of constructive composition (e.g. Hilly Landscape, 1934). Generations of painters of the Great Hungarian Plain produced pictures of strict tempo portraying endless distances, glowing heat and perishing cold of the Great Hungarian Plain with taciturn resoluteness of peasants living there.

Landscape painting can never die: it will always bring us a message of nature and thoughts and mood inspired by it.

This tour was written by dr. Anna Szinyei Merse

Edited by dr. Emil Krén