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

1888 or in 1889; and János Vaszary who studied there under the same teachers from 1889 through 1894. As to those who appeared in the Academy Julian's registry book a decade later, that is to say after 1903, they had Jean-Paul Laurens as their teacher almost without exception. Bertalan Pór visited the Academy in 1901; Géza Bornemisza attended it in 1903, Béla Czóbel and Sándor Galimberti in 1904, Róbert Berény, József Egry and Dezső Czigány in 1905; Ödön Márffy studied there after 1902, Attila Sassy (Aiglon) in 1906, and Dezső Orbán in 1907. It was in the same years (1905 and 1906), therefore, that the largest contingency of Hungarian painters and the American painter Max Weber set up their easels in the building on Rue du Dragon. Through some of the other Hungarians attending the Academy Julian, Weber made the acquaintance of Robert Berény in 1906. A few years later, in 1908, Weber became one of Matisse's first pupils: he belonged to those artists who left a good impression on Matisse,

39 and he is still regarded as one of the most important among the American Fauves and Cubists.

40 According to the above compilation (obviously an incomplete one), most of the Hungarian artists (not counting members of the older generation) visited the school between 1903 and 1907, or better still, in 1904-1905. Evidently, there is a link between the functioning and the educational methods of the Academy Julian on the one hand, and the birth of Fauvism on the other. In those years and in the case of the Hungarian students at the Academy this link is all the more obvious as the influence of Matisse and his circle is clearly visible on their canvases. Until 1905 Matisse continued to work in those studios, where the recognized maestros corrected the students' works. It is possible that he made contact with the Hungarians precisely at the Academy Julian; though there were other places, too, where they could have met. Whatever had been the case, those Hungarian artists, who had, by 1905, been in Paris for an extended period, and who had also visited the Salon d'Automne, were able to grasp that something new had been born in painting. Therefore, it is also possible that, instead of first encountering this new style through Béla Czóbel's compositions in Nagybánya in 1906, they had actually learned about it first hand from the Fauves, most notably from Matisse's circle, at an earlier date. As to their first encounter with the works of the other two

—possibly even "wilder"

—

Fauves, they probably saw the exuberant carnivals of colours by Derain and Vlaminck only at the Salon d'Automne, but still before the summer of 1906. Warming up for Fauvism There were two accepted methods in the teaching practices of both Gustave Moreau and the Academy Julian, which, despite their seemingly conservative spirit, actually paved the way to the birth of Fauvism. One of them was drawing, painting and sculpting after a live model. The other was the copying of old masters, for which the virtually inexhaustible collections of the Louvre provided the best opportunity. Nude painting formed an obligatory part of the artists' training in almost every art school in Paris: no art school could exist without it, not for male students, that is to say. Women had to fight for their right to draw or paint after a live sitter. In Hungary this was an even more controversial issue, than in Paris.

41 For the French painters, old and young alike, the copying of the old masters' works was an emotional issue, perhaps even more so than for the Hungarian painters during the same period. Naturally, one contributing factor in this was the fact that the André Derain's copy of "Christ Carrying the Cross" attributed to Biagio d'Antonio (detail), cca. 1901 Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Legat Georges F Keller 1981, © HUNGART 2006 French artists had so many masterpieces at their disposal: all they had to do was to pick any room in the Louvre and they were guaranteed to find something worth copying there. And in the process of trying to understand the old masters' approach, their devices and the secret of their impact, they also interpreted, and occasionally reinterpreted, what they had seen and observed. Both methods

—copying classical paintings and painting a live model

—led to reinterpretation and continued to have a major impact on their work. Of course, all the painters at the start of their career tried really hard to produce the most faithful copy of a famous painting, so exact that it could be mistaken for the original. Likewise, they tried to depict the nude's outside curves as well as its internal bone structure as true to life as possible. Some were more successful than others. Rezső Bálint, for example, had a hard time trying to copy a Tintoretto. "For a whole month I worked on copying a picture not larger than the palm of my hand, doing my best, only to finish it with an individual interpretation in my desperation."

42 Presumably, this was how he developed the idea, quite unconsciously at the beginning, of finishing the painting on the basis of his own artistic concept, perhaps by a few brush-strokes here and there, throwing up some sketchy dabs of colours, but at the same time paraphrasing it. Copying old masters Gustave Moreau was among the most enthusiastic copiers; as luck would have it, several of his works have survived. Moreau registered himself with the administration of the Louvre already at the age of 17 so as to be allowed to copy the great masters; there are more than a hundred such drawings in the collection of the Gustave Moreau Museum.

43 Moreau taught his pupils not to allow their contemporaries to influence them; instead, they should seek refuge in the museums with the old masters, who would inspire them to be creative.

44 His pupils, among them Matisse, Marquet and Georges Rouault, executed copies in the Louvre under Moreau's supervision. The catalogue of "Copier Créer" has published the most extensive and most profound discussion so far on the principles and the problems re-