Veszprémi Nóra - Szücs György szerk.: Borsos József festő és fotográfus (1821–1883) (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2009/4)

BORSOS JÓZSEF, A FESTŐ / JÓZSEF BORSOS THE PAINTER - Arcképek/Portraits

rétegéből; az üzleti világból éppúgy, mint a művészvilágból. Ruházatuk alapján az ismeretlen portréalanyokat is e társadalmi csoportok tagjai közé sorolhatjuk, annál is inkább, mert forrásokból tudjuk, hogy Borsos portréiért Pesten és Bécsben is viszonylag magas árat kért. B. E. F 0 R T R A 11 S For the majority of the painters in 19th-century Hungary and Austria, portrait painting offered the steadiest source of livelihood, for the simple reason that the demand was the greatest here. The art writers of the period encouraged the artists to turn to more monumental art forms - historical painting, genre scenes - because many of them believed that portrait painting necessarily implied a catering for the demands of the individuals who commissioned them, and therefore it severely limited artistic freedom. As numerous masterpieces will confirm, this was not necessarily so: beside rendering physical features and representing social status, the best portrait painters also captured the true character of their models. Therefore, the outstanding portrait painters, such as József Borsos'friend and master Friedrich von Amerling, for example, enjoyed tremendous recognition.The Viennese critics often compared the young Borsos' portraits to the works of Amerling, which was an incredible praise. Borsos soon became a much soughtafter portrait painter: most of his surviving works belong to this genre. This is the part of his oeuvre, which can be reconstructed to the fullest; where the pieces can be put together to provide the most consistent "story"; and where the marks of Borsos' peculiar style can be best studied. The scale of his portraits showed a broad variety, ranging from miniatures to representational portraits. The manner in which he painted them varied according to function and size. Half-portraits constituted one of the most important groups in Borsos'oeuvre. The portraits that emerged from Borsos'studio show intense looking men of strong character and proud posture, along with women, who appear gentle yet selfrespecting. Although not entirely unparalleled, his true-to-life style of painting materials is nevertheless highly distinctive. Very few Hungarian Biedermeier painter could match Borsos' ability to make the eyes come alive: with a couple of masterful brushstrokes, he applied vivid colours, which appeared a little too bold from close up, while creating the impression of "wetness"from a distance. Borsos attended to every little detail with fastidious care: the clothes and the jewelry (for women, necklaces, bracelets and earrings; for men, decorations, pocket watches, seal rings and wedding rings) were rendered always in a distinctive manner that was eminently suitable for the material in question. The faint glitter of silk, the ethereal fineness of lace, the softness of fur, the reflected lights of pearls and gold are feasts for the eye in every one of Borsos' portraits. He often added a couple of still-life motifs to his portraits - this, together with the more dynamic posturing, made his portraits look a bit like genre scenes. He usually painted a neutral background for his portraits: a little lighter around the face, and turning warmish brown near the edges. In general, he opted for an indoor location, although occasionally - at the request of the commissioner, most likely - we can see a somewhat schematic but pleasant, lyrical landscape (this seems to contradict the judgment of one of his biographers /Wurzbach, 1857/, who claimed that Borsos could not paint landscapes). His earliest known portrait, a miniature from 1839, still showed him an inexperienced youngster with a tentative hand (Cat. No. 1 ). The works he made in the first half of the 1840s reveal that he was still not entirely through with experimenting: this is evident from a portrait of Count Ödön Zichy as the Emir of Lebanon (1843, Cat. No. 5), revealing a touch of Orientalism that would not return later on in his career, as well as from a female portrait made in 1844 (Cat. No. 11 ) or Kristóf Hegedűs'

portrait of romantic posturing (Cat. No. 7). However, by the middle of the decade Borsos had developed his own distinctive style. This was the time when he painted his best male portraits, from the picture of an alleged Irish nobleman, "Count Gestel O'Henfels", through the depictions of Sámuel Jósika, the unknown Home Guard, Mátyás Zitterbarth and Count Manó Andrássy, right to the portrait of Count János Pálffy (Cat. Nos 13, 23, 28, 35, 38,46). These were paintings of uniformly high standard. The artist's late period is best illustrated by the three recently emerged portraits of the Kiss family (Cat. Nos 57-59). He apparently chose different painterly techniques for tasks presenting different representative reguirements. As for the verifiably authentic pictures dated after 1860, they reveal more or less the same uniformly high artistic standards, although they are somewhat lacking in vigour. József Borsos' known commissioners came partly from the circles of the Hungarian aristocracy and partly from the wealthier sections of the bourgeoisie, from the business and the art world alike. Judging from the dresses, we can guess that the unknown models also belonged to these social groups. But since the contemporary sources tell us that Borsos charged a rather hefty fee for his portraits both in Pest and in Vienna, this is in fact a relatively safe guess. B. E.