Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)

Funeral Art in the First Half of the 20th Century

tialism of Beck’s own distinctive style. The sculpture on Ferenc Ferdinánd Baumgarten's tomb, the Sitting Wanderer, was completed by 1929 (K 26/1). An outstanding, representative work of Beck's oeuvre, Henrik Fellner’s funeral monument is likely to have been a consolation prize of sorts for an artist denied public commissions (K 34). The three-figure sculptural group called The Father Introduced hii Som to life was unveiled in 1933. A year later Mrs. Miksa Fenyő’s funeral sculpture was erected in the shape of a pious angel figure, which, even in its damaged condition, is one of the finest works of art ever set up in Farkasrét Cemetery (F 33/2).

Other works by Beck include Zoltán Ambrus's funeral monument unveiled in 1939 (K 46) and three approximately contemporaneous sepulchral sculptures in Buda on the tombs of Béla Szász (F 7/6), Mrs. Román née Janka Elek (F 7/8) and Frigyes Hoffmann (F new24). One of his last works, also set up in Farkasrét Cemetery, on Imre Illés's sepulchre, has been cleared away; the tomb sculpture has been lost, but knowing the prevailing funeral practices, it can be safely assumed that it has been reused after the name was re-carved.

Funeral commissions played an important part in the oeuvre of Ferenc Medgyessy, too. Unveiled in 1917, his first sepulchral work was the Lengyel tomb, a characteristic specimen of Medgyessy’s funereal art representing the figure of a lonely woman (F 8/1). The artist made two sepulchral monuments,

■ The sepulchre of Mrs. Mikid Fenyő and Dezső Ciánki (by Fülöp Beck Ö. and Clemér Fülöp)

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