Sz. Kürti Katalin: Vezető a Déri Múzeum kiállításaihoz I. Régi képtár és Új magyar képtár (Debrecen, 1978)

An example of these phenomena is an early painting of Munkácsy's seen in the Ecce Homo Hall of the Museum, Grieving Shepherd and three paintings by János Jankó. Two of them depict wedding dinners, the third is genuinely exotic, a colourful scene from the life of Gypsies. From the 60s on more and more painters came to Hungary from abroad to discover the Hungarian Geat Plain. Such was August Pettenkoffen who succeeded in persuading a number of Austrian painters to paint the landscape round Szolnok. Some of them settled here and assimilated to the Hungarians, e.g. Károly Lotz, whose father was German. First he preferred to paint grazing horse-herds, storms in the plain (three of these paintings are on display in our Museum), later, with Mór Than, he painted representative murals for public buildings. For the representative tasks a solemn, academic, neobaroque approach was required, which was most fully adopted by Lotz and Gyula Benczúr (1844-1920). Whereas Székely and Madarász tried to keep the ideas of national independence alive, Benczur's view of Hungarian history was loyal to the Vienna court and served the official cultural and educational policy. His solemn representative historical tableaux, though showing great professional skills, lacked dramatic power and aimed primarily at pathetic effects. In addition to the neobaroque and academic styles, in the 70s and 80s of the century, indfluenced mainly by the French realistic school, there arose in our country too, a sincere trend to portray the landscape and the people. This view gave rise to László Patak/s plein-air lanscapes and portraits seen in Déri Museum, too, together with the small size portraits of Imre Révész and a landscape by Géza Mészöly. Mészöly is devoted to the intimate depiction of the landscape. His imagination is not attracted by spectacular and wildly romantic mountain scenes, but the tiny elements of the world of waterside regions. Worthy themes for him are the pool, the reeds, the weather-worn barges. This new aspect is expressed in Marshland Scene in Autumn (1872), which is an excellent example of painting in the open. László Paál and Mihály Munkácsy enhanced the reputation of Hungarian art in Paris. Paál lived only 33 years, and was obsessed by the Barbizon forest. His friend and guardian of his legacy, Munkácsy, was a central figure in the Paris society for several decades and gradually gave up his early plebeian themes. Our Museum possesses works from all his periods in the so-called Ecce Homo Hall. 89