Gopcsa Katalin (szerk.): Egry (Budapest, 2005)

wrote, "for allowing me to see values vital for growth that had been unknown to me before.... I learned to have the highest esteem for Gauguin, Van Gogh, Puvis de Chavannes, as well as the Barbizon School." During his stay in Paris Egry had a predilection for painting the woods around the city and the banks of the Seine with its docks. At this period he showed a preference for monochrome, usually some version of warm browns or Sienna reds, compositions of loose brushwork and variously diluted paint. He had used a similar technique earlier in his Female Head (Plate 3) of 1903, a face that radiates a transcendent devotion; now the same manner is employed to depict gently swaying rowboats along the banks of the Seine (Plate 5). On the reverse of another scene painted in Paris he employs similar brown brushstrokes to lightly sketch the figure of Saint Sebastian on the cardboard. Likewise on the back of a later painting, the three-quarter figure Self-Portrait of 1912 (Plate 15), he uses light brown brushstrokes to sketch out Study for the Painting "Symbol" (Plate 14). The nude figure of Christ on the cross delineated in brown contours is related to the anatomically excellent rendition of the earlier nude figure of Saint Sebastian. Similar dark brown outlines characterize the color lithograph made by Egry in 1918 for the art gallery Picture writers - Picture Carvers showing a male nude in contrapposto looking up at a small sculpture in his raised right hand. The background in Picture Writers - Picture Carvers is occupied by a building with a tympanum that may represent the temple of the arts (Plate 19). Egry's early work carries the mark of realist, naturalist, and impressionist influences, mixed with a smattering of secessionist elements. The success of his 1909 exhibition at the Artists' Gallery played a significant role in the reception of Egry's work. A review m A Hét signed Vra' (presumably Miklós Rózsa) lauded him as follows: "This young man has taken Budapest by storm. Artists and connoisseurs are already referring to him as a new Hungarian Millet." The Artists' Gallery also furthered Egry's development by providing an intellectual community of artists. The artistic life of Budapest was localized in various cafés, and Egry felt at home in the friendly circles of the Café Fészek and the Café Japán. Friendships with other artists played a role in his intellectual and artistic development, as did such major local exhibitions as Modern French Masters and the Meunier retrospective at the National Salon in 1909. In all likelihood these shows motivated his 1911-12 sojourn in Belgium. His paintings from the 1910-12 period depict stevedores and port workers, transporters of lumber, and agricultural workers (Plate 12). These selfassured figures that have about them an air of expectation and are set within constructive compositional structures testify to Egry's solidarity with Meunier's manner of representation. Already during his Paris stay Egry sent markedly caricaturelike drawings to the periodical Fidibusz and, after its demise in 1908, to its successor Izé. Sándor Láncz, author of a monograph on Egry, sees these drawings as evidence of the transformation that characterizes the artist's visual world. In the wake of the tonal drawings contours become much more emphatic, and the compositions increasingly rely upon the map-like effect of outlines. The studies sketched on the backs of paintings, the posters that are a rare exception in Egry's oeuvre, and the flat, decorative, contoured drawings published in periodicals all testify to a change in the artist's style from a tonal mode of representation toward a flatter, contoured manner. This stylistic feature can be seen in Adam and Eve (The Golden Age) (Plate 9) painted in late 1909 or early 1910. The composition is defined by a tranquil, symmetrical arrangement of motifs. The central axis is occupied by the twin-limbed tree symbolizing the Tree of Life. Leaning against this decorative tree on the left is the female nude biting into the apple, while Adam stands facing the viewer, his face a disguised self-portrait. In the foreground the trees and the horizontal green leaves of the bushes echoing the boughs create an idyllic mood redolent of a golden age, suggesting the harmonious co-existence of man and nature. Landscape with Trees (Plate 8) is executed in a manner considerably divergent from the rest, since it is characterized by a decorative mode of composition showing the powerful influence exerted by Japanese color woodcuts. The painter István Szajkó has called attention to the fact that this double trunked tree is actually a negative of a tree. Presumably the artist first made a precise drawing of the tree, and only then did he paint the background. The grounding of the canvas the coloring of the tree's double trunk and leaves - was left for later. However, when the painter got this far, he realized that the painting was done. This may explain the paucity of paint in Egry's Landscape with Trees, while the artist's earlier landscapes are thick with paint, full of an impasto applied with broad, short strokes of the brush. The golden yellow tree covers the upper quarter of the painting with its small, radiant leaves, while the texture of the canvas shows through the brushwork of the foreground, brilliant with light and marked by powerful shading. This tree is like the flowers