Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)

HUNGARIAN FAUVES CASE STUDIES - GERGELY BARKI: Róbert Berény, the "Apprenti Fauve"

One of Berény's most beautiful drawings, reminiscent of Picasso's Portrait of Gertrude Stein and also comparable to the drawing Matisse made of his wife in Collioure

25 (Fig. 16), depicts the same model, this time dressed, sitting on the same bed

26 (Fig. 15, Cat. No. 28). Incidentally, the drawing also has a nude version

27 (Fig. 14, Cat. No. 27), just as the oil painting Woman in Red Dressing Gown has a nude version in drawing

28 (Fig. 11). Set against a landscape background, the female figure dressed in red also shows up in a compositional study, which was probably also made in 1907, judging from its style (Fig. 12). In addition to the earlier mentioned Woman in Red Dressing Gown, Berény had a still-life (Fig. 21), a landscape and two Monaco beach scenes exhibited at the 1907 Salon des Indépendants, although the latter three are only known to us from art reviews published in the press.

29 It was not just the Hungarian art scene and Hungarian papers that took note of his taking part at this exhibition; the French papers also commented on the paintings of Berény, who had, by then, been acknowledged as a true Fauve. In an article about his visit to the Salon des Indépendants, Louis Vauxcelles, who had come up with the name "Fauves", characterized the various artists by adding prefixes and postfixes to the word Fauve. In the brief list he also mentioned Berény, referring to him as an "apprenti fauve", or Fauve apprentice.

30 Although we cannot be sure what Vauxcelles meant exactly, he probably referred to the youthful age of Berény, who had just turned twenty at the time. 21. Róbert Berény: Still-life, 1906. Private collection 22. Robert Berény: Reclining Nude, 1907. Cat. No. 12.