Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Nagybánya művészete, Kiállítás a nagybányai művésztelep alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1996/1)
Szinyei Merse Anna: A nagybányai festészet plein air előzményei
bieten ebenfalls einige Analogien. Später kamen jedoch andere Tendenzen zur Geltung: während Ferenczy und seine Freunde von der stilisierenden Vereinfachung der Form, der Synthese angezogen wurden, wurden Slevogt und Corinth noch impressionistischer. Bei einer komparativen Untersuchung der miteinander verwandten Bestrebungen fiel auf, daß aus grundverschiedenen geschichtlichen, wirtschaftlichen und kulturellen Umgebungen eine ähnliche Auffassung verkörpernde Werke hervorgingen. Diesmal konnten wir uns in die Verarbeitung der aus dem breiten Panorama immer wieder hervortretenden konkreten Analogien nicht vertiefen. Die typologischen, ikonologischen und Stilanalysen, die auch die Variationen der ähnichen Verarbeitungsvorgänge der miteinander verwandten Themen erfassen würden, hätten nur in einem umfangreichen Band Platz. Bei einem Vergleich der verschiedenen Erscheinungsformen können wir gleichzeitig mit Überraschung und mit Stolz feststellen, daß unsere Maler weitgehend Kinder ihres Zeitalters waren, die zur Entstehung des abwechslungsreichen europäischen Gesamtbildes in markanter Weise beitrugen und keine Epigonen waren. Dies gilt sowohl für die frühen Resultate des Pleinairs (um 1870), als auch für die mit 1896 begonnene Vollentfaltung der Kunst von Nagybánya, und daß auch die ungarischen Beispiele für die in den dazwischenliegenden Jahrzehnten aufblühenden naturalistischen Annäherung einen bedeutenden Platz in der internationalen Wertordnung errangen. The Plein-air Antecedents of Nagybánya Painting ANNA SZINYEI MERSE Over the course of a few decades, several different varieties of the new interpretation of nature were developed in opposition to academic rules and spread throughout the world. These varied from country to country and from school to school. This essay investigates the local initiatives which were directly, or indirectly encountered by the painters who later came to form the Nagybánya school, during their formative years and as mature artists. Constable, Bonington, and the first and second generation of Barbizon painters became more widely known after the 1860s. The eastern and central European artists first saw the multifarious representations based on the direct observation of nature and real life on the occasions of the 1869 international exhibition in Munich and the Viennese world fair in 1873. Those who were not in the position to pay a visit to Paris or to other western cities had a chance to make interesting discoveries at the international shows of the Glaspalast in Munich during the 1880s and 1890s. Taking a closer look at the Hungarian circumstances of the time, we arrive at the conclusion that the art students were able to see such Hungarian and foreign paintings at the exhibitions in the Műcsarnok, which could be regarded as preliminary influences. In 1883, for example, at the age of eighteen, István Csók encountered "the first, powerful artistic proclamation" of his life, when he saw Pál Szinyei Merse's Picnic in May, which the elder master had painted ten years earlier, but which was still received with hostility by the art critics. Only a few of Szinyei's paintings could be seen in the shadow of Historicism, just celebrating its last victory at the Millennial Exhibition held in commemoration of the one-thousand-year anniversary of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin. But those few major works of Szinyei were so strikingly different from the flood of pictures produced by the various trends that the enthusiasm felt for Szinyei by the young artists who were just on their way to Nagybánya was understandable. As revealed in their memoirs, they saw Szinyei as their artistic forefather from this time on. The visit the painter of Picnic in May (1873) and of Melting of Snow (1884-1895) paid to Nagybánya and his honest criticism of their work meant a great deal to them. Before 1900, only a very few paintings could be seen in Budapest by either László Paál, who lived in Barbizon after 1873, or Mihály Munkácsy, who resided in Paris. Nevertheless, even these few pictures could have provided the young artists with new inspiration. Although any direct influence would hardly have been possible, it is worth pointing out the similarities between the first version of Mihály Munkácsy 's Dusty Road (1874, first exhibited in Hungary in 1903) and Simon Hollósy's Zrínyi Breaking Out of Sziget Castle (the middle of the 1890s). Theirs was a strange, unusual type of plein-air, with the gleaming colours of atmosphere painting: smoke and dust blur the forms and render the contours unconfined. Paysage intims were regularly shown in Budapest after the 1870s. Occasionally, surprisingly bold plein-air landscapes were produced by Géza Mészöly and his colleagues, and a little later also by László Mednyánszky, whose ideas were related to those of the artists working in Barbizon. Some of the painters who studied or lived in Munich during the 1880s, and especially Frigyes Strobentz, who was also an esteemed member of the artists' colony at Dachau, had developed their modern methods before Hollósy did. Many of them were receptive to the plein-air Naturalism of Dagnan-Bouveret, and also to the art of Bastien-Lepage; and not only in their landscapes, but also in their lightly toned interiors, which were basking in light.
