Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Munkácsy a nagyvilágban (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2005/1)

I. TANULMÁNYOK - MUNKÁCSY A NAGYVILÁGBAN - BOROS Judit: Egy magyar festő Párizsban. Munkácsy Mihály pályája 1870 és 1896 között

York-i kirakatában, majd rendkívül magas áron találva gazdára megnyitotta az amerikai milliárdosok képvásárlási sorozatát.

40 Az eleve népszerűségnek örvendő témákat Goupil úgy rendelte meg a művészektől, hogy a választott tárgy jól érvényesüljön metszet vagy nyomat formájában: viszonylag egyszerű, jól tagolt kompozíciót várt el, nagy színfoltokat, és persze kellően népszerű feldolgozást. Ez lehetett drámai, hősies, szentimentális stb. Goupil a lehető legszélesebb vevőkör igényei szerint szervezte üzletmenetét, úgy, hogy minél változatosabb társadalmi és anyagi helyzetben levő vevőkört alakíthasson ki. Az alsóbb néposztálvokhoz tartozó vevők pallérozatlan ízlése bizonyos mértékig visszahatott a megrendelésekre is. Munkácsy, akinek veleszületett érzéke volt a monumentalitás, a jól tagolt kompozíció és a drámai jelenetek iránt, kiváló partnernek ígérkezett Goupil számára. Ugyanakkor Goupil jó kapcsolatokat ápolt a párizsi Salon korifeusaival: Bonnat, Cabanel, Henner, Gérôme, Lefébvre mellett sokáig fűzte hozzá kizárólagos forgalmazói szerződés Bouguereau-t is. A 70-es években a barbizoni festők képeit kezdte forgalmazni, ami magya42. kép Két alak. Tanulmány a Zálogházhoz / Two Figures. Study for Pawnshop, 1873 missioned Gérôme to execute the paintings La mort de César and L'Assassinat du duc de Guise for the specific purpose of making prints ol them. Within a short time, the painting depicting Caesar's death appeared in the shop-window of the New York branch, and was promptly snatched up at an extremely high price, signalling the start of the New York millionaires' binge on paintings.

40 Goupil's instructions to the artists about the specific themes, which had already been popular with the public, were designed to ensure that the compositions would be suitable for the purposes of engravings or prints: he expected relatively simple and well thought-out compositions with large colour- fields and, of course, a general treatment that was likely to appeal to the public. This could have been dramatic, heroic, sentimental, etc. Goupil organized his business policy according to the demands of the largest possible circle of customers, hoping to attract buyers with a diverse social and financial background. The uneducated tastes of the lower classes to some extent determined the commissioned artworks. With his gift for monumentality, well-structured composition and dramatic scenes, Munkácsy promised to be an excellent partner for Goupil. At the same time, Goupil had good relations with the coryphaei of the Salon: on top of Bonnat, Cabanel, Henner, Gérôme, and Lefébvre, he also had, for quite a long time, an exclusive contract with Bouguereau. In the 1870s he took an interest m the works of the Barbizon painters, which may explain his decision to refuse to buy Munkácsy's Milton in 1878, thinking it to be too expensive. The question arises whether Munkácsy's business relations with Goupil, Knoedler" and the others

42 had any influence on the development of his style, and if so, in what way and to what extent. To address this problem properly, one would really need to write a separate essay. In a short answer, one can say that it did not fundamentally influence his style, or if it did, then it was for the better. This is shown by the fact that m Paris Munkácsy continued painting in the realist style of the 1860s, in his own individual way, allowing himself more artistic freedom than most of his French colleagues. (III. 41—42) Quoting Lajos Fülep, Munkácsy possessed a specific gift (in Fülep's view, a drawback) in that "he showed more then he concealed";

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' in other words, he created colour patches (or lines), which suggested the presence of certain objects without clearly defining what they were, what relations they had with their surroundings, and what their artistic values were. This can be condemned as inattention to details, or hailed as the utilization of the expressive power of colour patches and lines: an effort to create a visual field, which provides a direct, sensual (or perhaps even emotionally interprétable) experience regardless of any cognitive meaning. Munkácsy was a very musical man: the expressive/suggestive elements m his art have a musical quality. Although always harmonious and rhythmically balanced, in the first half of the 1870s this music was mostly confined to the lower registers. When the contemporary critics repeatedly complained that Munkácsy's paintings were too dark, they actually meant to say that the era of dark pictures had