Gosztonyi Ferenc - Király Erzsébet - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2002-2004. 24/9 (MNG Budapest, 2005)
NEW ATTRIBUTIONS - Róbert Berény: Children in the Garden, 1906 (Gergely Barki)
RÓBERT BERÉNY: CHILDREN IN THE GARDEN, 1906 BY GERGELY BARRI The Hungarian National Gallery purchased this oil painting from a private collector in 1977 and registered it under the title In the Park. The registration label identified it as the work of Rezső Bálint (1885-1945), probably based on information provided by the vendor. When it was later exhibited in the show The Art of Nagybánya, organised by the Hungarian National Gallery and the Szombathely Gallery, Rezső Bálint was again credited as its creator. 1 Rezső Bálint was working at the Nagybánya Artists' Colony at the time this picture was painted 2 , but nothing is known about his works from the year 1906. His earliest dated picture, Portrait of his Mother (1907), 3 and the composition Children Bathing 11 bear a close stylistic resemblance to the work in question, but the method of their painting differs markedly. There is no reproduction available of the painting entitled Children displayed at the Kéve Group exhibition of 1909, but its title may have contributed to the mistaken attribution. However, the most likely cause of the false identification in 1977 may have been the misleading initials BR rather than any stylistic analysis or information available about Rezső Bálint' s participation at various exhibitions. Róbert Berény: Children in the Garden, 1906. Oil on canvas, 57x67 cm Signed lower left: BR 1906 Tótfalú Inv.: 82.64 T Knowing all this, however, makes it is all the more difficult to understand why Róbert Berény (1887-1953) was never considered as the possible painter of this picture, since he not only had the same initials, but also had a strikingly similar artistic career. In their early years, both artists went to Paris at roughly the same time, both regularly attended evening classes at the Grand Chaumière school; both published articles in the progressive magazines of the time, and both were among the very few who wrote positive reviews of the first exhibition of the Hungarian Futurists 5 . They got married at almost the same time and were even neighbours for awhile in Városmajor street in Budapest. Apart from these coincidences, there are some important facts that led to the attribution of this work to Róbert Berény rather than Rezső Bálint. Extremely compelling is the signature of the painting, which is remarkably similar, with its individually fashioned calligraphy/' to that found on another picture by Berény from 1906, Self portrait in Straw Hat. Moreover, in our painting the inscription under the initials, which had been considered unintelligible, can easily be interpreted as 'tótfalú' [sic!], referring to the village Tahitótfalu. Although Berény was living in Paris between 1905 and 1911, he always spent the summers in Hungary in the family house in Városmajor and he regularly visited Tahitótfalu, as well. Some of his pictures painted at Tótfalu were exhibited in the summer of 1909. 8 The strongest evidence to suggest Berény stayed in Tahitótfalu in 1906 is the painting entitled House with a Garden, which shows very similar summer leaves. The signature also supports our claim that Berény was indeed working at this village on the banks of the Danube in 1906 9 . Adding to the confusion was some incorrect information published earlier on by Béla Szíj, an expert on Berény's oeuvre, about Berény's participation in the Salon d'Automne upon his return to Paris in 1906. Szíj must have had the correct information about this 1906 autumn Paris exhibition from Imre Oltványi-Artinger's essay on Berény 10 , but instead of examining the catalogue of the Autumn Salon, he mistakenly used that of the May Salon. Here he certainly found the name 'Berény (R.)\ but failed to realize the two paintings listed" were
