Szinyei Merse Anna: Szinyei Merse Pál (1845-1920) (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai)

figures have become too graphic in comparison to the soft tones of the background. His refined naturalism reminds us of Bastien-Lepage's works, especially of Les foins (1877). This is an interesting fact for, at the beginning of the 1890s, the painters of Nagybánya - who can be considered as Szinyei Merse's successors were enthusiastic about the French painters in Munich for this very reason. Yet similar results had been achieved in Hungarian painting as early as 1870. In fact, such work was produced in Szinyei Merse's studio in Munich. Szinyei Merse, however, completely withdrew his pictures from the sphere of European painting by selling them (they went to America). This not only prevented the paintings becoming better know, but it also had a detrimental effect on the continuity of development in Hungarian painting. The Pair of Lovers was transferred to a Hungarian museum around about 1932; both variants of the Mother with Her Children are American private property to this very day. After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870 Szinyei Merse was unable to go to Paris, so he went home to his family. During the nearly two years of his retirement to Jernye, he only painted family portraits, an altar-piece and a nature study. The portraits of his father and his sister, both completed in 1870, are significant Hungarian examples of the realistic portrayal of the individual and they reflect the model's soul as well. In June 1872, after his return to Munich, the First Sketch of the Picnic in May, his masterpiece, seemingly burst out of him. up to this time, all his significant works were ideas that had ripened at home. At their birth, he was still effected by the magic of nature and his pleasant experience at home. Having returned to the inspiring world of Munich and its artists, he was able to conceive entirely original, novel works, because the regressive forces prevailing in Munich had at that time not come into action. This may be the reason why his art is so different from everything else that was created in vicinity of the Bavarian Academy of Painting. The iconographie predecessors of the Picnic in May (1872-73, plate XXXI) are the French Déjeuner pictures; yet none of them could have had an effect on Szinyei Merse, as he had never seen them. In addition to this, his style is different all of them. On the other hand, he owed a lot to his studio neighbour, Arnold Böcklin, who encouraged him to increase the strength of colours in his pictures. An echo of their talks is the surprisingly bold, ardently coloured sketch of Studio II. (plate XXX). The sparkling of the illuminated atmosphere in the Picnic in May and its fresh reality strongly deviates, however, from the sophistication of Böcklin's world of mythological scenes. The perfectly balanced plein-air composition is the most significant Middle-European result of the accomplishment of the new attitude towards nature. After short exhibitions in Munich and Vienna in 1873, which viewers and critics attended with general incomprehension, Szinyei Merse took the picture along to his estate in upper Northern Hungary. Thus it could hardly have had any effect on Hungarian painting - a very lamentable fact indeed. In 1883, the picture again received bad critics in Vienna and Budapest. It was only in 1896 that it first had success and was thus transferred to a museum. In its immediate surroundings, however, the temporary influence of the Picnic in May cannot be denied: Fritz Schider's, Albert Lang's, A. Liezen-Mayer's and J. Benczúr's fresh sketches, made between 1873 an 75, can only be explained by referring to Szinyei Merse's example. While painting the Picnic in May, he created several smaller masterpieces. One of these, the Bathing Hut (1872), won the Art Medal at the 1873 Vienna World Exhibition. Strom on Lake Starnberg ( 1872) is a brilliant nature study. The small sketches of Idyll and Rococo (1972plates XXIV, XXV) and the Walking in Tutzing (1873- plate XXVIII) show the young painter as a virtuoso unequalled in Munich, as far as sweeping brushwork and vigorous colouring are concerned. On Green Grass (1873- plate XXXV) is one of Szinyei Merse's most modern pictorial ideas: its analogies can only be found in ripe French impressionism. It is here that he tried the wonderful colour contrasts of violetyellow-green. One year later he used this in his Lady in Violet (plate XXXII), but this was already without the fresh directness of the sketch. After his return home, he painted his fiancée in On the Garden Seat ( 1873- plate XXIX). This is also an impressionistic flash full of green reflections - but, unfortunately, it remained without sequel. He married, and in the country environment, far from art centres, he became doubtful about his work. He had a strong desire to follow his only understanding friend, Arnold Böcklin, to Florence (some of his Munich colleagues did so). However, due to family reasons he abstained from this, as well as from his travel to Munich planned for 1875. Thus, in the solitude of Jernye, the memory of Böcklin gave him a temporary inspiration for the nature-symbolisme in his painting (Tourbillon, 1873). His