Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

STUDIES - Jenő MURÁDIN: Count Géza Teleki and the Transylvanian Connections of the Artists' House

having withdrawn to the solitude of his Alsózsuk estate after World War I. Still a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in the first years of the new century, he submitted a handful of works for the spring exhibition of the National Salon. Following this, he displayed a few landscapes and figurai compositions at the Artists' House shows. Not much more is betrayed of him in the lexicon entry of the 1912 National Salon Year Book.

11 Having married, he and his wife, the beautiful and charming, former ball belle Margit Béldi,

12 established themselves at Alsózsuk (Jucu de Jos). Their mansion was to regularly welcome and entertain the local nobility, participants at the famous horse races and the artist friends of the host. (Ills. 1-2) It is quite interesting to note that Teleki had the mansion refurbished (before his marriage) by the well-known architect István Medgyaszay.

13 This may have directed his attention towards the Gödöllő Art-Nouveau school. Close to Kolozsvár and the Bonchida (Bontida) and Válaszút (Räscruci) estates of the Bánffy family, it was a well-known mansion on a hilltop rising above the former Romanian serf village in the fertile valley of the river Szamos. It had a perfect view of the racecourse down below providing 8,000 metres for flat races and hound hunts rivalling the Alag races. For three Sundays from the end of September, the annual races made excellent entertainment for people from Kolozsvár and further afield. And then followed the daily hunts for three months. The spectacular hound hunts usually involving groups of ten horses provided a pictorial theme for Géza Teleki and his guests too. According to the late Mihály Teleki's personal account, in case of fox chasing, participants wore red tails, and green tails when hares were chased.

14 The guests were offered board at the Hubertus Inn run by the hunting society that rented the racecourse. The friends and invitees of the count stayed at his mansion. In his manuscript memoirs, Manó Markovits, a regular participant at the Alsózsuk races and hunts, put down his recollections of the atmosphere of these pre-war occasions: "Géza Teleki's house was packed with his brother Domokos's and his mother's families, his two merry sisters, numerous relatives and guests; they made the house continually throb with excitement and mirth: gipsy music, dance, games; in case of frost heaving, breakneck paper chases were conducted across the mill bank of the Szamos to the lightning rod on the rooftop of the mansion. The family of Count Kálmán Petrichevich-Horváth lived at Felsőzsuk (Jucu de Sus), 3. Group photo at the beginning of the 20

th century: (from left to right) Domokos Teleki, Géza Teleki, Judit Bánffy, Zsuzsanna Bánffy, Photo by Joánovics Brothers, Kolozsvár. By courtesy of Michael Dickinson. where the hunters would always be welcome guests. The company by and large considered it their duty to ride in full dress to Bonchida and pay homage to Count György Bánffy, the chairman of the society, who would always receive the guests cordially in his 'modest home' - actually, a most sumptuous and noble palace."

15 The war put an end to all that; the last hound hunt being held in the autumn of 1913. After the Vienna Accord in 1940, the races were renewed for a short while. Fitting the period and style of historicism, the mansion was not particularly big, but homely, the guestrooms cosy. A wing of the L-shaped building is depicted in a painting by József RipplRónai in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery.

16 (Colour Plate VIII) This picture is material proof of the fact that a good number of the members of the Artists' House who were exhibiting their work in Kolozsvár in 1910 visited the Alsózsuk mansion of the Telekis. The painting has a lawn and groups of flowers in front of the wing of the building, whose entrance and fenestration have by now been changed. In the left of the composition, a page in black suit stands at attention. Soon after RipplRónai completed it, the work was exhibited at the Artists' House inauguration exhibition early in 1913. In contrast to later vaguenesses, the catalogue was quite precise in naming the subject: "Count Géza Teleki's Mansion at Alsózsuk." Owing to his income from his several thousands of acres of land and letting of the racecourse, he could afford to support the various art movements of the period with loans and generous grants. There was no secret about the magnitude of his wealth. He was very much at the head of the list of major taxpayers in Kolozs County. At the time of the Transylvanian exhibition of the Artists' House in 1910, he paid 3,055 crowns in tax. The only ones to outpay him were the Bánffys of Bonchida and Válaszút, though with a vast difference.

17 The "Painters' Count" set up his studio in his Alsózsuk mansion. Also, he acquired paintings, primarily from the MIÉNK and the Artists' House exhibitions; however, the details are unknown. It is our irreparable loss that the furnishings of the house fell victim to the senseless destruction and looting following World War II. Though unlike the Bonchida castle, the building itself survived the stormy period, nothing of the paintings, books, furniture remained. It is not clear what happened to Teleki's correspondence with the artists of the period. Today, the mansion houses a school; a few wide-trunk oaks still stand as vestiges of its former park. A massive, vase-like block of stone stands in its foreground, its carvings of animal figures (hounds, a cock-fight, etc.) attest to an expert, artistic hand. (111. 4) SHOWS IN KOLOZSVÁR AND NAGYVÁRAD While hopeless bargaining went on concerning the rent of the Váci-utca showroom, the Artists' House management decided to make use of the summer months of the year 1910, too, and to organize exhibitions in the country. And opted for Kolozsvár and Nagyvárad. This was no mere coincidence, for the MIÉNK, which had been expelled from the National Salon only a year earlier, had arranged its country exhibitions in these two cities. There was another consideration behind the decision, too: Count Teleki knew the localities, had direct experiences of them and social connec-