Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 18. (Budapest, 1999)

Magdolna LICHNER: Data on Gyula Benczúr's Collection of Textiles

discover what prompted Gyula Benczúr to establish the collection and to reveal the ideas which guided him during the course of the collection work. The painter's ars poetica was "Qui laborat orat",

s "He who works prays". In other words, we glorify God through our work. The work ethic, which determined his entire life, was probably a spiritual inheritance from his mother's family (which was originally Dutch),

9 as well as from his grandfather and great-grandfather, who were pastors. It meant continuous activity, in line with his chosen vocation. It explains his acknowledgement of, and respect for, professional knowledge, qualities highly thought of by contemporaries and critics.

70 Perhaps even more is said by the words on his bookplates: UNDE QVO [I]TUR? "Where have we come from and where are we going?" These are chased onto the pedestal of a sphinx, against which a court fool in jester's cap is leaning (fig. 3-4.)/

; There could be no better summary of Benczúr's outlook. In the background there is an Egyptian monument symbolizing eternity truth, as if embodying historical memory, together with the symbol of an artist sceptically taking on the desire for immortality - in reality dependent for his livelihood on the favours of rulers and other patrons, but in his soul free of the restrictions of the Court. Today this amounts almost to a commonplace, but a commonplace that says much about someone who started out as a Academicist artist. Besides Benczúr's excellent portraits immortalizing members of his family and figures in public life, he reached the zenith of his career in his large-scale historical compositions. His admirers and detractors alike acknowledge that he was at home in historical painting serving prestige and display purposes, and this was helped by his upbringing, training and the schools he attended. However, the high standard he reached within this genre was due to hard work and talent on his part. It was fortunate that his personal convictions often accorded with the dominant tastes of his time, and with the demands of his circle of patrons. He was born in 1844. As a result of his family and intellectual heritage in Kassa, (today: Kosice in Slovakia), he learned to respect the great figures of Hungarian history, and at the same time its tragic heroes, choosing them as themes in his paintings. His national feelings were shaped by the large family he came from, by the opinions and views held by relatives and friends, and by his teachers at his elementary school, Prem on Straten sian secondary school and, from 1858, his scienceorientated secondary school at Kassa/

2 His first drawing teachers and the first printed pictures he saw exercised a strong effect on him/

5 His interest in Hungarian history came from his birthplace, and he maintained it until the end of his life, although he learnt the method of the lifelike painting of scenes replete with pathos in a magnificence appropriate to the theme from his celebrated Munich teacher Karl von Piloty/

4 and not least from his fellow-artists/

5 A still more important influence on him came from studying the works of the old masters. Rubens, Van Dyck, Titian, Tiepolo and Boucher were his chosen models. During the years he spent in Munich he studied many of their works; and during his travels in Italy, and later on to Paris and Fontainebleau, he had still more occasion to do so/

6 These biographical details are not without their uses from the point of view of our theme, and may serve as indicators as to how the Benczúr collection came into being and the motives behind it. In the opinion of the present author, as well as Piloty it was Hans Makart who gave the idea and who implanted the desire in Benczúr of creating a collection that was interesting from a painter's point of view.