Horváth János: Kunffy Lajos - A somogytúri Kunffy Emlékmúzeum katalógusa (Kaposvár, 2005)

_ _____ fys^^^s Û<yT^ _ _ His paintings were well received at the Salon d'Automne and this organization admitted him as a nonjudging member. He found success in cultural diplomacy as well. The french acknowledged his efforts by awarding him the Legion of Honor. Meanwhile the Hungarian Association of Fine Arts in Budapest commissioned him to organize an exhibition of contemporary American and French paintings. Kunffy painted his best pictures during the summers he spent at his home in Hungary The more than three thousand acres of the estate of Somogytur were given to him by his father in 1905. His grandfather, who was born in tata, bought the noble manor house standing on the estate from the Bosnyák family. The house exemplifies the traditional country architecture favored by the nobility The open area with the columns was „faithful to its original style, added by the painter. In the beginning the care and management of the estates was guided by his younger brother, Karoly, who earned his outstanding agricultural expertise and diploma at Halle (Germany) and successfully expanded all the Kunffy estates. The artist discovered at Somogytur the long-haired, dark-complexioned, colorfully clad Gypsies who revitalized his pictorial world. Kunffy's paintings of the Gypsies brought him immense popularity in Paris. 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-Illes. 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. 67