Gyergyádesz László, ifj.: „Csavargó”. Mednyánszky László élete és művészete (Kecskemét, 2007)

‘Baron László Mednyánszky, the painter came from that era of Hungary when barons and counts were so bored that they had to be fool because that was in fashion.

István Széchenyi started it already: He could found the Academy of Sciences build the Chain Bridge and write his pamphlets. In Hungary he was still called the fool of Döbling...’ (Gyula Krúdy)

Vázlatkönyvi rajz - Támaszkodó (1890 k., kát. 25.) Sketch-book drawing - Leaning (around 1890, cat. 25)

Baron László Mednyánszky of Aranyosmedgyes was born on 23rd April, 1852 in house No. 5 of the main square of Beckó (also called Bolondóc, today called Beckov in Slovakia) in ‘Trencsén’ county as a child of Count Eduárd Mednyánszky and Mária Anna Szirmay. On 4th May he got the name Ladislaus Josephus Balthasar Eustachius Mednyánszky in the Roman Catholic Parish Church of Beckó in the presence of his godparents Count János Erdődy Nepomuk and Countess Terézia Raczinski. He was the offset of an aristocrat house which had a significant past and which is said to come to North Hungary from Poland in the 13th century and they were named after their first land in ‘Medne’ in County Trencsén. In the years 1848-49 Mednyánszky’s father played an active role in the Hungarian War of Independence but thanks to a good- willing Austrian colonel he was allowed to return to Beckó without any punishment, while his older brother, László was hanged by Haynau in Pozsony, and his younger brother, Géza (Cesar), who had earlier been a padre, committed suicide in his exile in France. Mednyánszky spent the first period of his childhood in Beckó with his parents, where he was in a close connection especially with his grandmother of French origin, Eleonóra Richert de Vhir. The stories and the mystery of the ruined castle of Beckó - according to the legend one of the notorious ancestors of the family, voivode Stibor had it built on top of the rocks for his favourite clown - became a spiritual heritage for the whole life of the painter. After the death of his mother’s father Boldizsár Szirmay in 1856 the Mednyánszky family spent the summers in Nagyőr