The first works of Simon Hollósy were genre paintings with idyllic atmosphere like the Reverie (Portrait of a Woman), the Good Wine, and In the Tavern and only their painterly quality discerned them from the commercial renderings of the theme.
Beginning with 1896, he was deeply concerned with the problems of plein-air. The social problems of the Hungarian society had a great impact on him as well. He reached a social radicalism instinctively. He wanted to make his ethical standpoint public when he painted the visionary Rákóczi March. Nevertheless, the descriptive naturalism that he used when depicting genres was not fit for expressing his basic views on life appropriately. He had to change the formal language of his style.
At the same time he was confronted with the problems of plein-air at Nagybánya. He found a quite personal solution at the end. He was not interested in the freshness of plein-air, or the reflexes of the forms, the surface of which were dismembered by light. He wanted to find a possibility to convey artistically the dusty air.
The sketch of the Rákóczi March renders the march of the revolutionary crowd with figures that are tottering in the space, tugged by wind and bitten by dust. The strictness of the composition is replaced by the vibration of the space, the visionary rendering of the shapes that appear from the dust. On the first sketches, the thin layer of paint and the dissolved, worn out forms of watercolour have a peculiar stereoscopic effect and create the illusion of dust whirling in the air. Some of the impressionistic elements became an organic part of his style in a later period of creation, but his resolution of forms is not given by conscious painterly methods, but the primary approach of the given motif or theme, that is filled with emotion. Nevertheless, he never succeeded in resolving the Rákóczi March. He was fighting it from 1896 until his death (1908). Some well-resolved sketches prove his intuitive gift, but he never managed to clear up the compositional components of his painting. Even the interpretation of the theme changed along the many variations, this is why the work of art, which was meant to be his main work, remained only a promising torso.
Hollósy broke up with the school of Nagybánya in 1902 and brought the students of his Munich art school to Técső (in Máramaros district) for summer practice after this. When he left, the social end ethical concerns left Nagybánya with him.
Two dear friends and disciples of Hollósy, István Réti and János Thorma remained faithful to the principles of the circle of Hollósy for a while. In spite of their family ties in the town and the fact that they were the ones to lure Hollósy and his school to the picturesque Nagybánya, the natural experience, the problem of plein-air, did not interest them in the first years.
János Thorma was attracted by Rembrandt and Velázquez. His genre paintings continued the tradition of the young Munkácsy: The First of October, Amongst Coachmen. Later on, he had been struggling with a greater scaled historical composition: Rise up, Hungarian!. Nevertheless, this painting is not a visionary work of art like the Rákóczi March. He chose to renew the romantic historical painting, using some of the experiences of the naturalistic phase in Munich. This is where the inner formal contradictions of the huge historical painting come from: in the background of the romantic gestures, theatrical composition, are naturalistically conveyed details. Thorma arrived to the typical style of Nagybánya at the end of the 20's: Landscape in Autumn, Picking Violet.
The first pictures of István Réti are dominated by feeling: Bohemians' Christmas Abroad. He takes the Hollósy circle's cult of emotion to Nagybánya with himself. The Portrait of my mother or his Self-portrait (1898) are darkly toned creations that accentuate the emotional element. This can be said about his masterpiece, the Funeral of the Homeguard as well, the atmosphere of which speaks about passing away, about a nostalgic remembrance of the ideas of the revolution in 1848. He continues the matters of the Hollósy circle when he researches the effects of the sun coming through the window, which loosens the forms and makes the colours more intense. His main works are his portraits which confess a refined insight into the human soul: Portrait of my Mother and the ones that render the small happenings of the interiors: Old Women. He was not a prolific painter, but was active as a teacher and devoted much of his time to the formulation of the aesthetics of the Nagybánya artists' colony as well as to the writing of its history.