Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 102-103. (Budapest, 2005)
ANNUAL REPORT 2005 - A 2005. ÉV - MÓNIKA KUMIN: From Romanticism to Post-Imressionism: New Permanent Exhibition of the Department of Art after 1800
One of the two great halls —reminiscent of Genthon's concept —hosts the French, while the other the German and Austrian representative material. Although the title suggests a chronological approach, in these two halls more emphasis was given to present the most spectacular artworks of the collection. Passing the entrance, the visitor faces Rodin's The Bronze Age, a sculpture recalling its ancient and Renaissance precedents. On the walls of the gallery, there are pictures that provide a representative demonstration of how landscape painting changed over the 19th century. Commencing with Camille Corot's early Italian Souvenirs, which is still rooted in classicism, yet bears the traces of an unmitigated experience with nature; examples of the Barbizon painters follow —Virgilio Diaz de la Pena, Jules Dupré, CharlesFrançois Daubigny, Constant Troyon —until we reach, through the works of Gustave Courbet, the more impartial and more objective landscape representations of the mature Corot. Furthermore, his late style is represented also by his Woman with Daisy, an allusion to Raphael's female characters. The second hall gives space to a selection of works from the most important nineteenth century schools of German and Austrian painting. The Viennese Biedermeier portrait —and genre painting is represented by works of Friedrich von Amerling, Franz Eybl and Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, the Munich Academy of Arts by Wilhelm von Kaulbach's Pomona, a Titian-paraphrase, while there are two works from two disciples of Piloty: Wilheim Leibl's impressive Portrait of Szinyei Merse, influenced by Corot, and Franz von Lenbach's plein air painting, the Triumphal Arch of Titus in Rome. Study tours in Rome are recalled by two Italian vedute of Oswald Achenbach, as well, who represents here the Düsseldorf School. The Swiss Arnold Böcklin's work on a mythological topic, the Centaur at the Village Blacksmith, painted when he was elderly, enriches the contemporary artistic production from the German-speaking region. In view of its theme, another painting could be included here: the Northern Italian Giovanni Segantini's pantheistic composition, The Last Works of the Sun. The row of cabinets underlines well the chronological organisation of the works, an intention that goes occasionally hand in hand with the formation of thematic units. The first cabinet (no. 17) plays on the Oriental theme: Eugène Delacroix represents here Romanticism with two pictures on the Arab theme; next to them there is a small painting of Eugène Fromentin, Reed-Cutters on the Nile, whereas Theodor Chassériau's Spanish Dancer, Petra Camara, leads the viewer on to the exotic, Orientalising painting of the nineteenth century.
