William Penn Life, 2000 (35. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2000-04-01 / 4. szám
IN THE NEW YORK PUBLIC Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, hangs a painting of John Milton, the great 17th century English Poet. It depicts the poet and his three daughters in a deep-toned dramatic scene. But, more so, it reveals the pain and uncertainty of the life of a creative individual. It was a pain and uncertainty that this work's creator, Mihály Munkácsy, may have understood all too well. For much of his career, Munkácsy struggled to balance aesthetics and popularity, undeniable talent and enviable commercial success. The results of these conflicting influences are now on exhibit at the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation in New Brunswick, N.J. This retrospective, commemorating the 100th anniversary of Munkácsy's death, offers a comprehensive look at an artist called a genius by some, a sell-out by others and a national hero by Hungarians. Munkácsy was born in 1844 in Munkács, Hungary, to a lower middle class family, who then moved to Miskolc. Orphaned by the age of seven, young Munkácsy was taken by his guardian, an uncle, to live in Békéscsaba, where he studied cabinetmaking. There he found that, while he did not like carpentry, he did enjoy drawing. He amused himself by copying the etchings hanging on the walls of his uncle's home. He received some early art instruction from Elek Szamossy, an itinerant painter of country homes. In 1863, with a letter of introduction from Szamossy, Munkácsy went to the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest where he began to work as a painter under Antal Ligeti. His early works included portraits and scenes of village life that he remembered from his childhood home. These themes were the source of his "genre paintings." After studying briefly in Vienna in 1865 and in Munich and Düsseldorf in 1869, he settled in Paris in 1871. By then, he was only 26 years old and had already won the 1870 gold medal of the Paris Salon for his painting "The Condemned Cell," a depiction of a prisoner in his final hours. Munkácsy's life underwent a complete transformation as a result of his newly acquired fame. He eagerly embraced his new success, married a wealthy French widow and built a luxurious home. His success in Paris coincided with his change from genre paintings to drawing room or salon paintings which represented the life his was living. It was the life of the nouveau riche clients who were buying his art. Charles Sedelmeyer, an aggressive art dealer who was now marketing Munkácsy's art, encouraged him to continue in this vein. Munkácsy produced more than 50 such paintings, many of which were variations of a few of his salon pieces. Characterized by their rich, crowded compositions and deep, vivid color, these works were marked by a use of lights that can be compared to the Dutch Masters. Some of the Dutch influence may have come from Munkácsy's friend, László Paál, who was painting in Holland. These drawing room scenes brought Munkácsy his first taste of unfavorable criticism. They were criticized as being superficial and lacking the pathos of his earlier genre paintings. While art critics, connoisseurs and the public were divided in their opinions of Munkácsy, the artist experienced a rise to fame nearly unparalleled in the art world. By 1878, he created the depiction of Milton and his daughters. The studies for this work and some of his other figure paintings rank among his most successful and expressive portraits. In a study for "The Yawning Apprentice," painted in Düsseldorf in 1869, there is a fluid movement on the brushwork of the young boy's face and clothing and a lack of distractions from other elements which allow the study to surpass the larger composition. Munkácsy's portraits, with the help of Sedelmeyer, became popular with wealthy patrons in the United States. They were sold for large sums of money to the such famous American businessmen as Cornelius and William Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, William Astor, August Belmont and Joseph Pulitzer. In 1886, Munkácsy toured the United States to promote his painting 6 Killian Pm Lila, April 2000 Mihály Munkácsy:
