Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)
PHD THESES AT THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL GALLERY - Gábor BELLÁK: Types of Representation in the Portraiture of Gyula Benczúr
was that the friendly and family relations of those he depicted clearly outlined the circle that genuinely liked Benczúr's art and the reasons why they did so. It became obvious that Benczúr's portraiture could be divided into three periods. Each period constitutes a particular unit in respect of both the style used and the persons depicted. It is not the same social strata that is represented in the early and late Benczúr portraits. The system of relationships between the persons that is so outlined also provides additional information on the sociological status of the artist. It can now be stated that though Benczúr became the portraitist of the aristocracy, the financial and political elite, from the 1880s, he painted only a part of this elite. The Transylvanian aristocracy, for instance, was left completely out of the circle his clients. The leading families of Transylvania seem to have employed the similarly Transylvanian Miklós Barabás, who was fulfilling several commissions to paint portraits as late as the 1890s. Barabás was not only the representative of another generation and style, but also, it might be said, that his portraiture was the representation of a different kind of aristocracy. Special analysis focussed on two thematic units within Benczúr's portraiture, which can be regarded as unique in Hungarian portrait painting at the time. The first unit concerns the problems of group portraiture in connection with the two great compositions that have been destroyed (The Statutory Meeting of the First Hungarian General Insurance Company, 1882; and the Millennial Homage, 1908), and the second one the problems of self-representation in connection with his series of self-portraits. The most important lesson drawn from this aspect of the analysis was that the new kind of generic investigation made it quite clear that Benczúr had a pioneering role in the Hungarian art of the era, and this was a result former research had not dared iterate. Generic analysis and the relationships gathered from the catalogue of portraits rendered it evident that Benczúr had created a unique body of work in the genre of self-portraiture. It was no mere coincidence that the chapter of the thesis on self-portraits came to be the longest. Apart from the chronology of the portraits and their interpretation with regard to the artist's career, these analyses extensively drew on the findings of international literature discussing issues of self-representation and self-imagination. The most visible results of these Benczúr researches have been the exhibitions devoted to his work since 2001 (Emst Museum; Kassa [Kosice], Nyíregyháza, Miskolc) and the various publications that appeared between the submission and the defence of the dissertation. The PhD thesis was defended on June 17, 2005 at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Institute of Art History. The consultant was Katalin Sinkó. RECENT RELATED PUBLICATIONS BY GÁBOR BELLÁK: Drága Linám! Benczúr Gyula leveleskönyve 1861-1892. (Edition, footnotes and afterword) Budapest: Széphalom Könyvműhely, 2004. "Festőfejcdelmek Bécsben és Budapesten. Benczúr és Makart." In: Az áttörés kora. Exhibition cat., Budapest: HNG and Historical Museum, 2004, pp. 163-173. "Álarcok és szerepek. Benczúr Gyula öregkori önarcképeiről." In: Maradandóság és változás. Művészettörténeti konferencia. Ráckeve, 2000. Budapest: MTA Művészettörténeti Kutatóintézet - Képző- és Iparművészeti Lektorátus, 2004, pp. 381-389. EXHIBITIONS CURATED BY GÁBOR BELLÁK: "Az utolsó festöfejedelem ": Benczúr Gyula (1844-1920) (The Last Painter Prince...). Ernst Museum, Budapest, July-October 2001. Posledné knieza maliarstva. Gyula Benczúr (The Last Painter Prince...). Vychodoslovenská Gallery, Kassa (Kosice), September-December 2001. Válogatás Benczúr Gyida műveiből (Selection from the Works of. ..). Municipal Museum, Nyíregyháza, September 7 - December 31, 2006. Benczúr Gyula. A festőfejedelem és kortársai. Festői rendezés a festészet színpadán (Gyula Benczúr: the Painter Prince and His Contemporaries - A Painter Directing on the Stage of Painting). Miskolc Gallery, June-October 2007.
