Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)

AT HOME AND ABROAD - KRISZTINA PASSUTH: Wild Beasts of Hungary Meet Fauves in France

As far as we know, in Budapest the Academy of Fine Arts did not have a charismatic teacher comparable to Gustave Moreau. Simon Hollósy, the only Hungarian painter and teacher who could truly be described as charismatic, was teaching primarily in Munich and Nagybánya at the time, but he had even less in common with 20th-century modern painting than Gustave Moreau did. And although Gustave Moreau could not properly be called a genius (as Adolphe Basler wrote about him later), he was still an ideal guide for the students of École des Beaux Arts. His studio was the only one, where they could have a discussion about Impressionism, Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh.

36 The secret of his successes as a teacher lay not in his school teaching (in this he resembled Hollósy), but in his approach to art, which was anything but academic, as well as in his open and easygoing personality. Gustave Moreau's students included Matisse, Marquet, Jean Puy, Charles Camoin and Henri Manguin

—the same artists who were going to form the hard core of the Fauve group within a couple of years. But the future Neos and the Hungarian Fauves were

—at one time or another, and in one place or another

—also under the tutelage of Hollósy. To name a few examples, Béla Iványi Grünwald became a close associate of Hollósy in 1886, Károly Kernstok in 1892, Dezső Cigány in 1900, Sándor Galimberti in 1903, Vilmos Huszár, and József Pechán in 1904. Julian Academy During the period in question

—i.e. between 1904 and 1914—the young Hungarian artists, whose views on painting could already be described as modern, were almost as likely to visit the Julian Academy as their French colleagues were. The same people who spent the winter in Paris, happily working away in the rooms of the Julian Academy, packed with aspiring artists and their easels, were likely to be found in the lavish green settings of Nagybánya in the company of their colleagues back at home during the summer. Naturally, there were some people, on whom the attraction of this bucolic landscape was wasted

—Róbert Berény or Ödön Márffy, for example

—and who preferred to stay in the metropolises, primarily in Paris. All things considered, the private school, Julian Academy played a much bigger role in Hungarian painting than one would have thought at first sight. Young people were admitted to this institute for various lengths of time without any entry exams

—provided they could cough up the hefty tuition fee. So, some people spent one week here, like Dezső Orbán, and some attended it for several years, like Kernstok. And although it had a large foreign contingency, the private school was fundamentally French. The young greenhorns coming from Budapest found themselves in a genuine Parisian environment, where they could learn not only all the tricks of nude painting, but also everything about the nascent art movements, if not from the teachers, than from their fellow students. Founded in 1868 by Rodolphe Julian, Julian Academy employed the best-known teachers at the time, such as Bouguereau, G. Ferrier and Tony Robert-Fleury.

37 It was the mixed community and free atmosphere that attracted the Nabis here in 1888. But even after their departure, artists who later gained prominence continued to study there. They included Dunoyer de Segonzac, who studied there in 1903, before becoming Béla Czóbel's close friend, and also Derain, who attended classes there in 1904. Apparently, some of the young painters attendMax Weber: Two Female Figures, 7 908 Private collection ed other private schools besides the Julian Academy (the Académie Colarossi or the Grande Chaumière, for example). The Julian Academy had several distinct locations, but the centre was in Passage des Panoramas. The male section of the "Julian" opened at 31 Rue du Dragon in 1890. On the second floor of this elegant building of a charming atmosphere

—as attractive and pleasant today as it was then

—was where its most popular teacher, the painter Jean-Paul Laurens set up his spacious and comfortable studio. From 1890 until at least 1917, in other words for nearly three decades, Laurens went on instructing his students here. At those monthly exhibitions, where the students could show their works to the public, Jean-Paul Laurens' pupils enjoyed a privileged status and were ranked separately. In addition to his numerous French students, Jean-Paul Laurens had a large number of American and Japanese pupils and

—much more importantly from our viewpoint

—Hungarian students. The teachers, including Laurens, held conservative views about art; their aim was to prepare their students for an entry into the École des Beaux Arts, so that in due time they would be able to exhibit their works in the official salons and to win the most prestigious scholarship, "Prix de Rome". Later on, Laurens himself was appointed to a teaching post at the École, the institute, which quite a few students from the Julian set their eyes on. The cohesion of the school was very strong: it held together even those who had already left this private school to enrol in the much more prestigious state-run institute.

38 The Hungarian painters associated with Fauvism visited the school at different times, and worked under the supervision and patronage of different masters. The first Hungarian students to enrol in the Academy Julian were István Csók, who studied under Bouguereau and RobertFleury from 1887 through 1889; Rippl-Rónai who attended it either in