Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 18. (Budapest, 1999)
Magdolna LICHNER: Data on Gyula Benczúr's Collection of Textiles
Although they spent just one year together at master-school (since Makart lived in Vienna from 1866, while Benczúr became one of the master's pupils only in 1865) the connection was probably not broken later on/ 7 The famous Vienna atelier, which was full to overflowing with art works and which was intended to advertise the taste and competence of its proprietor/ 5 quickly established the fashion in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and beyond. Benczúr's collection was a more modest version of the very same endeavour. We could say that it did not serve display purposes, but rather studies made by the painter, and sheer pleasure/ 9 It did not laud the refined taste and prestige of the collector, but much more his aims. We can detect this viewpoint when we see that it contains artefacts acquired piece by piece so that they could be used as drapery (fig. 7. MAA Inv. No.: 16.207), or very threadbare, damaged textiles held in high regard by the artist, because even in this condition they revealed how the light breaks on them, and the character radiated by their pattern and colour (MAA Inv. Nos.: 16.191, 16.193, 16.200, 16. 202, etc.). Gyula Benczúr was a successful artist. In his lifetime he received much official recognition, 20 and contemporaries paid tribute to his professional skills, mentioning principally the lifelike quality of the painted surfaces. 27 Katalin Telepy, his later monographer and the organizer of the 1958 exhibition commemorating his work, also stressed that one of his virtues as a painter was the fulsome depiction of materials. 22 The following lines from the guide to the textile collection are worth quoting: "The deceased master, who was great virtuoso in painting the soft brilliancy of velvets and the sheen of silks, collected old fabrics, embroidery and costumes with especial devotion."" 5 Károly Lyka put it even better: "He took great pleasure in everything that was sumptuous, magnificent and richly embellished - passionately collecting colourful silks, brocades, ceremonial attire and historical costumes, so much so that after his death a separate exhibition of these could be staged at the Museum of Applied Arts." 24 Following these quotations it would seem to be an easy task to discover the pieces still in the collection wheh feature in Benczúr's paintings, and in this way to find out when he began to collect and where, and which were the first pieces that we used for his paintings. But Benczúr was not painting textile pattern-sheets. These velvets, damasks, brocades, embroideries, and costumes merely served as models for his balanced compositions, where light and shade, the tonal value of colours, the bulk of the figures and the clothing tightly upon them (these could at one and the same time be true conveyors of the impulses and characters of protagonists and of their place in history) - all were important components in the expected impact of the picture. He subordinated individual details to this impact, to the work as a whole. The master's painterly technique makes it difficult to recognize specific pieces, because Benczúr preferred the brushwork used by 16th-century Venetian painters and the great painters of the Baroque, and compositions built up from tones and colours. Very often he used bitumen paints, 25 preferring the brownish colour harmony of early Flemish paintings, the so-called gallery tone. Consequently, today it is frequently hard to identify original colours. An admired ability of his was that he could sense the texture of individual materials. As a matter of fact, this was based on a procedure that was in general use: he put several whisp-likc coats on a thick, solid base colour in a glaze-like way, placing the shine on this with additional brushstrokes. He delighted in being able to depict texture, but this was never an end in itself. 26 The adjectives which we can use - for example, soft, solid,
