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

LÓRÁND BERECZKY: The First Fifty Years - 50™ ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL GALLERY - Anna SZINYEI MERSE: Periods, Masters, Styles, Themes...: 19th-Century Painting in the National Gallery

rector, Gábor Ö. Pogány, who had curated the first permanent 19

thcentury exhibition of the National Gallery thirty years earlier, interestingly made remarks very much resembling the ideas of Rosenblum referred to above, though bearing certain ideological overtones: "the art historians of the Hungarian National Gallery undertook a difficult task in arranging the permanent exhibition of 19

th-century Hungarian art in the aggressive atmosphere of a sectarian interpretation of modernism. The choir of the stern art critics of the past 60-80 years gradually incriminated the majority of the masters of the last century. They have made collectors and lovers of traditionally conceived artworks almost diffident. Connoisseurs have sometimes had to feel ashamed of the backwardness of our art. Under these intellectual conditions, what were the curators of the National Gallery to do with the 19

th century? Well, just what they did with the selection they had decided to display. To present as comprehensive a picture of the material created between 1800 and 1900 as possible [... ] They have sought to show the development of the arts, their tendencies, their manifestations suitable for reflecting the culture of their environment from several different aspects, in an unbiased way [...] They have made a muster of the century as it actually took place on the stage of history."

9 It was relieving to hear these words sympathizing with our conception, for it certainly was not respectful of the arrangements and selections of our former head that had been standing for decades. The most important changes with respect to antecedents was that the new display, as opposed to all former exhibitions of the 19

th century, sought to clearly separate the traditional and the innovative trends in Hungarian painting. The concept close to that of the Musée d'Orsay had been forced on us by the characteristics of the building, particularly its segmentalization. From the very outset, we wanted the exhibition to relate more organically to the existing baroque and 20

th-century displays, so that the development of Hungarian art could be observed in its whole process. Due to the fact that the visitor was to mount the stairs up to the first floor space underneath the cupola surrounded by monumental late baroque paintings, in front of Peter Krafft's monumental Zrínyi 's Charge from the Fortress of Szigetvár ( 1825), placing representative 19

th-century historical pieces in the halls on the two sides of this space seemed to make a logical sequence (previously, the first side hall had belonged to the baroque exhibition). Thus the monumental pictures and sculptures of the landing and the 3. Gyula Benczúr's The Recapture of Buda Castle and other historical paintings in the Ball Room of the Buda Royal Palace around 1980 cupola space received a more unified atmosphere; the changes in scale and period thus became less marked, and a more harmonic general impression is had as visitors mount up to the first floor. Wherever possible, we tried to base the exhibition on chronology, because this method facilitated rendering the lines of history, stylistic development and education perceptible. Thus, in the side hall that leads to Building D with its baroque and Enlightenment pictures, we placed the best work of the historical painters who had studied in Vienna and Paris, and removed their lesser works that had been on show earlier. (Colour Plate XVII) The side hall opposite came to room the paintings with a historical subject matter by the three Hungarian professors of the Munich academy (Sándor Wagner, Sándor Liezen-Mayer, Gyula Benczúr) and Bertalan Székely, and works by some of their pupils. (111. 2) This division also corresponds with chronology, moreover, by way of Munich, it creates a direct link with the introductory part of the exhibition in Building B. As a solemn spatial organizer, Benczúr's The Recapture of Buda Castle in 1686 closes the space under the cupola. Though many have disputed this hanging, we still cannot think of a more worthy place for this large-scale painting. It had been in the aula of the High Court building, then was put among other historical pictures in the Ball Room of the Buda Royal Palace (111. 3), and it now consummates the representative atmosphere of the halls beside the space underneath the cupola. The reason why we excluded hanging it in the Ball Room was because the historical work bearing the characteristics of romanticism and historicism would have been wedged in as an alien element among the innovative aspirations of the latter third of the century. (111. 4) Nor could it be put into the U-shaped sequence of rooms, because monumental-size pictures would have burst the internal proportions and intimacy of the spaces there. In the Museum of Fine Arts, it was only at the time of Gábor Térey's rearrangement in 1912 that historical painting was provided a separate hall. Much like our predecessors, we believe in the mixed hanging of genres, but, in this case, due to the overall aesthetic effect of the exhibition and the reasons mentioned, we preferred to make an exception. Having been a central genre in the period of increasing national independence in Hungary, this emphasized treatment of historical painting seems all the more justified. Thus the significant works by artists between 1800 and 1900, who aspired to more or less uphold older pictorial conventions 4. The present exhibition of late19*-century innovative tendecies in the Ball Room