Vadas József (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 13. (Budapest, 1993)
ÁCS Piroska: Glück Frigyes. Egy polgári műgyűjtő
Baldass "it was a representative of art historical collections, from the second half of the nineteenth century in Budapest". Such characteristics were typical first of all of the painting collections owned by Bode, which have seventeenth centurty Dutch paintings in the core. Yet his collections also contained certain works from Florentine Quattrocento and from Flourishing Venetian Renaissance, as well as a few beautiful pieces from sixteenth century Northern painters and eighteenth century masters. He was enriching his collections independently, without having to ask for help from Berlin. Thus, most of the beautiful paintings collected by him have qualities of a national cultural document. 5 It is even more true if we know that the material was completed with works of art from Hungarian masters (including miniatures, aquarelles, statues and statuettes). Although Gliick's paintings have been referred to in several articles and studies, some of them were even exhibited, we are unable to reconstruct the complete collection. 6 He collected some of his books in a city bookshop called "Eggenbergerium", where the regular customers (Kálmán Almási Balogh, Adolf Agai alias "Porzó", Ágost Greguss, Pál Gyulai, Károly Keleti, Albert Pákh and others), coming together, improvised a real intellectual, literary drawing room atmosphere. 7 Gliick's collection consisted of three well-defined fields: gastronomy, Budapest and artistic literature. The first among these was completed with a collection of menu cards including real graphic masterpieces. However, we cannot introduce the mostly bibliophil rarities here; though it is worth mentioning that the "ex libris" for the cookery part was written by the famous marquis Francois de Bayros 8 around 1913, when he was working for several Hungarian clients. (Getting familiar with the old Hungarian cookery books, Frigyes Glück, together with others, initiated that the well or badly used, sometimes pretentious German and French names should be exchanged for Hungarian ones on the menus. 9 ) His applied arts collection was rather varied as to genre and time: apart from one or two medieval treasures, it mainly covered the centuries from Renaissance to the Modern Age. Beside the great amount of furniture, ceramics, glasses, wood and ebony carvings, textiles (fabrics, embroideries, laces and carpets) the main role was given to goldsmith's works. These were divided into smaller groups - watches, caskets, jewels etc.) Among them there were several that reflected Frigyes Glück's civil position, his deep affection to the catering trade (such as cutlery, table centres and different table sets). In the material, there arc two special units - namely the key and cutlery collections - which now belong to the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts. Their presence in the Museum proves that when reconstructing or analysing the history of Hungarian Collections after 1850, we have to examine the relationship between the Hungarian museums and amateurs. This relation can be of different nature and intensity, changing significantly with time. From the 1880s several special exhibitions, showing treasures of fine or applied arts, provided an opportunity for a deeper cooperation between collectors and muscologists. Cooperation meant different things: on the one hand it included the initiation and governing of patrons, from public lectures to real, professional help 10 . On the other hand, in return for this collégial and supporting behaviour on behalf of the institutions, it meant lending some objects for shows, and donating or bequeathing others to the state.
