Veszprémi Nóra - Szücs György szerk.: Borsos József festő és fotográfus (1821–1883) (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2009/4)

BORSOS JÓZSEF, A FESTŐ / JÓZSEF BORSOS THE PAINTER - Eszter BÉKEFI József Borsos'Painting in the Light of the Biographical Facts

ESZTER BÉKEFI József Borsos' Painting in the Light of the Biographical Facts O 1 Very little documentary evidence has survived in relation to József Borsos. From the few fragmented sources that did survive, it is extremely difficult to draw even a sketchy picture of József Borsos' life and work - how he lived, with whom he kept in touch, who had an influence on his art, and what his motives were either when he started out in his career as a painter, or when he abandoned painting altogether. Nevertheless, his compositions earned József Borsos a place among the outstanding artists of mid-nineteenth-century Hungarian painting, and this is an assessment that is shared egually among the scholars specializing in his art, the general public and the art dealers. The scholarly research of his painting began with Béla Lázár's work in the 1910s, and continued in the 1930s by Jenő Kopp and in the 1960s by Zsuzsa Molnár. It was mainly owing to their efforts that the public had a chance to see Borsos' paintings in three comprehensive exhibitions (1913, Ernst Museum; 1937, a group exhibition presenting Hungarian Biedermeier art in the Budapest Palace of Art; and 1971, a retrospective exhibition in Veszprém). In addition to the in-depth research by these three scholars, several other authors made attempts to fill out the yawning gaps between the few known biographical details: some by drawing logically plausible inferences (Károly Lyka) and some by introducing arbitrary topics (Elek Londesz). Others still (Kálmán Csathó) reinterpreted all that in the name of artistic freedom and fantasy. The results were a number of highly individual - and presumably also highly fictitious - artistic portraits of József Borsos. One of the main objectives of our present research has been to collect the relevant information and to weed out the mere conjectures. We have tried to separate the facts from the legends on the one hand, while also making an attempt to bring the contemporary documents, the archival sources and the critical reviews of the day into harmony with the surviving compositions on the other. At the same time, we have no intention to dismiss the legends altogether, either, as these, too, can make a useful contribution to Borsos' artistic portrayal: all we would like to do is to strip them of their chaotic features. Borsos was born in Veszprém on December 20, 1821. His father worked as a solicitor and a journalist. A number of Borsos' biographers have suggested that the father was against the idea of his son becoming a painter. This is, however, just another example of the typical legends that are not borne out by the facts: if anything, his father, who was an influential journalist and newspaper propriator, seemed to be supportive of the idea. We had considerable difficulty untangling the contradictions that surrounded József Borsos' wives and children. Earlier researchers disagreed on the exact numbers on both counts. After researching the archives, we have concluded that the painter had at least two wives and one life partner during his life. It is almost certain that in Vienna Borsos lived with Ernesztin Mauthner, who passed away at an early age. The documents reveal that this was an extramarital affair: József Borsos had to go through a lengthy legal procedure before he could formally adopt their daughter, Vilma, because at the time of the child's birth Ernesztin had officially been still married to the landowner Károly Farkas. Vilma's first husband was named Imre Varságh: he worked in his father's photographic studio first as an assistant and then as a partner. Vilma eventually divorced him and then married again, this time to the writer and journalist Elemér Bársony who was quite popular at the turn of the century on account of his jolly hunting stories and nature descriptions. One of Borsos' marriages was a failure: in 1861 he divorced Josefa Maygraber Bauernfeld, of whom nothing else is known. In his old age, Borsos had two sons, Aladár József and Zoltán Borsos, from a third woman, Anna Falussy. According to family recollections, Borsos married her on his deathbed. While we had some success in our archival research to lift the Biedermeier veil of reticence on the family history, when