Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Rippl-Rónai József gyűjteményes kiállítása (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1998/1)

TANULMÁNYOK / ESSAYS - PLESZNIVY Edit: Örömök és szenvedések földjén. Rippl-Rónai József franciaországi helyszíneinek és képi motívumainak nyomában

day of the patron saint of the village, Saint Jacob. The joy of reunion, however, did not last long. General mobilization was proclaimed on 2 August 1914. Passions flared up in the strained atmosphere. RipplRónai was declared to be a German spy and almost lynched in the street. After this incident, Rippl imposed a nearly two-month long "house arrest" upon himself in the little village. But his zeal to work did not slacken. He perpetuated the atrocities he fell victim to in drawings with ironic inscriptions. Another ordeal began on 20 September: upon the order of the minister of the interior, they had to travel to Mâcon, the native town of Lamartine along the river Saone 440 km from Paris, where the "commissaire special" informed them at the prefecture that they would be interned. Rippl-Rónai was treated as "retenu" - a retained foreigner, his passport was confiscated. The only allowance they were granted was that they could stay at Hotel Genève, but every day at 8 pm they had to report to the authorities. From the first-floor window of their hotel room, Rippl captured the sight of troops marching to the railway station near the hotel, to be deployed on the front. After three and a half months in Mâcon, they had to go on. After a hard two-day railroad journey with an armed escort they arrived in Le Puy in Auvergne in December 1914. On new year's eve, the painter was transported to the POW camp at the monastery of Chartreuse. His amiable personality soon found the inmates of the camp close to his heart, forming a convivial friendly society. Innumerable sheets of drawing preserve the memory of his fellow prisoners of diverse nationality. After many aborted attempts, he was eventually declared medically unfit for military service through the good offices of the director of the camp M. Ravoux, and on 28 February 1915 they were allowed to leave France. The grave physical and mental trials lasting for seven months ended at last. This most difficult period of the painter's life was shown to the Hungarian public in the form of pictorial reports at the Ernst Museum in Budapest in 1915. Though always planning to, Rippl-Rónai never returned to France after 1915. The wartime and the bitter experiences of internment did not destroy his commitment and fondness of French culture which he had based on several decades of experience. He tried to preserve his earlier positive impressions purely and intactly: "(...) it was very long ago that I had a good time in Paris. The war had greatly disheartened me - I thought I had better preserve my memories intact," he wrote in 1917.