Kunt Ernő szerk.: Kép-hagyomány – Nép-hagyomány (Miskolc, 1990)

I. RÉSZTANULMÁNYOK - Olga Danglová: Tájképek paraszti lakásbelsőkben

landscape painting was used as a new kind of decoration, the main purpose of which was to enliven and make more varied the surface areas of the gates and walls.

4 Even the arrangement of the ornamental paintings occurred according to a central axis: an identical number of paintings was found on both the right and left sides of the gate, although there was a contrast between the two motifs of a winter landscape on the outer margin of the gate and a summer landscape on the inner margin. Oftentimes, one can see interlinks between landscape paintings with decorative inserts of animal or floral motifs. The decorative effect of the whole was strengthened by the use of glass and by a light-effect of the gates during night illumination. In the decorative use of pictures on the gates and walls, one can detect the link with the traditional folk art in this region. The paintings originated from the period around 1950 to 1970. In fact, though a short-term fashionable wave, these paintings in a representative respect reveal the shaping of the sentimental relationship between painting and nature. The artists of the paintings were predominantly members of the rural community. By profession they were peasants, craftsmen, local teachers, and often painters; less frequently, they were amateurs from towns close to the rural communities such as Skalica and Senica. The paintings were made according to a model, and the painters often used postcards, patterns from children's folders, and pictures from magazines. When choosing a topic according to the picturesque standards of the eighteenth century, the artists preferred stereotypically portrayed objects: gamekeepers' lodges, village houses, hamlets, watermills, and ruins of castles which they placed in a romantic landscape depicting one of the four seasons of the year. Most of the objects and natural scenery evoked domestic surroundings. Sometimes cottages resembled those houses which were built in the region of Záhorie; sometimes simplified versions of real castles in the area could be seen in the pictures. But there were also found objects of foreign origin (alpine cottages, windmills, and scenes from California which were painted according to the postcards sent from immigrants to the United States), imitating the models of the popular lithographic production of postcards. There were numerous romantic ruins of castles in the pictures. However, they did not represent national feelings as was the case in past centuries. They were attractive because of their fictive and unreal appearance. Hunting themes were also quite popular in rural environments. They were extremely close to lithographs of hunting scenes from the past century. (One should not forget that a hunting permit was a valued object and that it was a sign of higher status on the social scale

. ) Oftentimes

, a deer was portrayed

, which from the aspect of presentday aesthetics is considered to be quite commonplace and unworthy of artistic merit. Buf from the aspect of folk aesthetic taste it was, however, a favorite decorative element which made the country more picturesque. When one compares the paintings with the models, one can see that the painters simplified some forms (for example, a lake became more round), omitted some objects (rocks and figures), added some motifs (swans), and varied compositional details (flowers surrounding the lake)

. They often used vegetation to underscore the theme decoratively; they precisely limited forms by lines; and they reduced naturalistic color and light. In comparison with the original model, the result was a more rigid and static picture. Sometimes buyers caused small modifications of a theme. According to the model of the postcard, one buyer might want to have some elements omitted or added. Possibly he wished the lake to be without swans, or perhaps he desired birds to be painted in the sky. Obviously, the themes are concerned with familiar subjects, thereby indicating a trend towards picturesque decorativeness. The lines of composition depicted garlands, rows of identical bushes, and trees. The country became a pleasant decoration, a fantasy