Horváth János: Kunffy Lajos, 1993

In 1906 he began his major work, The Child's Funeral, Numerous studies and sketches preceded this large depiction of a part of life. In front of a thatch-roofed peasant cottage, a mother in mourning drapes herself over the small coffin in which her child lies in state, Positioned to the right and left of the central figures, in small groups are gathered the members of the close-knit family; there stand also the characteristic figures of the officiating priest and the sacristan. The episode takes place during the harvest season, when everyone is laboring in the fields, which accounts for the sparseness of participants in the scene. The summer sunshine reflecting off the white wall of the house emphasizes the blocklike weightiness of the individual figures. The father'with his head bowed is given importance by the semicircle of the veranda, which unites him with the mournes. This outstanding work belongs in the front ranks of the Hungarian plein-air school of Nagybanya's painters. The unified, freshly factual solutions revealed in the work were a result of the advice of Rippl-Ronai, just returned from Paris to settle permanently in the area. This painting is an example of „a painting at once" without later corrective work that mutes the intensity of the originally applied colors. At Kunffy's home, every summer, numerous artists were welcomed as guests. Many fine canvasses were painted there by Rippl-Ronai, Bela Ivanyi-Grunwald, Lajos Szlanyi and Aladár Edvi-llles. During these years Kunffy still returned to Paris every autumn, taking with him the results of the artistic output of the summer, among them, usually, one or two larger composition as well. Such paintings include the Harnessed Water Buffalos (1909), Sunday Conversations (1909). The Conferring Gypsies (1910), Harvestfest (1909) and the Wedding at Somogytur (1910). French masters and friends, seeing these paintings exhibited in the salon, praised their compositional strengths and their exotic geographical locations. Their objections included the belief that Kunffy „overpaints" his canvasses out of enthusism for too much detail, yet absolved from this criticism The Reverend of Somogytur (1905) and The Child's Funeral (1907). During his many travels Kunffy painted sketches on small pieces of board. In Paris their artistic achievements were praised in the highest. The well-grasped motifs were generously expressed and the lightness of the colors met with the approval of French taste. For the purpose of painting large canvasses, Kunffy built an atelier in the garden of Somogytur in 1909. He himself designed the spacious, half-Hungarian, half-Greek style building, which included a colonnade and a tympanum. He returned permanently to Hungary in order to attend to the cultivation of his estates and to provide for his son's upbringing in the Hungarian manner. Prior to his homecoming he arranged a large exhibition in the Georges Petit Gallery in 1913. Typically, the cover of the catalogue, which listed 144 paintings, shows a picture of a Gypsy. The catalogue was introduced by the outstanding French art critic Leopold Honore with the following words: „A certain confluence of taste and emotion, many memories, for long have brought France and Hungary close to each other, and this rapprochement, born of mutual sympathies, has given the magnetism of a tradition to artists. Munkácsy and many others have cultivated this tradition, and therefore, Lajos Kunffy could not ignore it either. Under the influence of French ambiance and spirit, which so generously pours forth from our own artists, Lajos Kunffy also did not hesitate to move to Paris for a more thorough acquaintance with it and to continue, then conclude, his education under the