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

AT HOME AND ABROAD - SOPHIE BARTHÉLÉMY: Pan! Dans l'oeil...The Paris Salons' Reception of the Hungarian Fauves in the Mirror of Contemporary French Critiques, 1904-1914

Ödön Márffy: Green Room (Green interior), cca. 1907. Cat. No. 165. 1906, but he continued to maintain close links with contemporary French painting; he regularly exhibited his Breton landscapes and Paris cityscapes in Budapest. Together with Czóbel, he embodied the principles of French modernism to the fullest within Nyolcak. Márffy took part in the exhibition at Salon d'Automne twice: first in 1906 and then again in 1908. The first works he sent there caught the attention of F. Georges Morot, the correspondent of the newspaper L'intransigeant. He classified Márffy as an "intimist", whom he criticized for giving precedence to mood over composition. All things considered, it appears that the critics had a favourable reception of Márffy's painting entitled Estaminet flamand, as shown by the

—sadly quite laconic

— comment: "Les petites salles d'estaminet flamand de MM. C. Marffy, Waly, Ethel Sands, J. Drésa, donnent chacun des notes personnelles."

54 Similarly brief, but a great deal less warm, was Thiébault-Sisson's review of Room VIII of the same Salon: "A noter, pour un salon mauve décoré de fleurs jaunes, le Hongrois Edmond Marffy; pour de petites études de fleurs, de natures mortes et de femmes nues, le Polonais Eugène Zak, et c'est tout ce que nous offrira pour la peinture cette salle."

55 Although he never became a member of Nyolcak, we mention it here that Vilmos Perlrott Csaba also got occasional mentions in the French press. As a student of Académie Julian and Académie Matisse, he stayed in Paris on numerous occasions between 1904 and the 1920s. Writing about the 1907 Salon des Indépendants, Thiébault-Sisson put a few words of praise in for him: "M. Perlrott, un Hongrois, est un coloriste harmonieux, quoique violent, et son portrait de peintre est d'un homme de talent."

56 At last we have an optimistic voice in the concert of critics, which is in tune with the Romanian Brancusi's view, who said that "il n'y a pas d'étrangers en art," only talented and untalented artists. Notes 1 Pan! Dans l'œil... [Take This!] after the title of the memoirs of Berthe Weill, Parisian gallery owner: Pan! dans l'oeil... ou trente ans dans les coulisses de la peinture contemporaine 1900-1930 [Take This!, or thirty years behind the scenes of contemporary painting 1900-1930] (Weill 1933). By organizing daring exhibitions, Weill contributed to the recogntion of "Young Painting", which was then either undervalued or not valued at all and in this way she contributed to the wider appreciation of Fauvism and Cubism. "Take This! " is a slap on the face of those journalists who often made sarcastic remarks about the Fauves. 2 Critics were just as uninterested in Hungarian literature as they were in Hungarian fine arts. In all the foreign issues of Lettres, published by the Mercure de France, there was hardly any mention of Hungarians, while :he Russians were widely discussed. For example, the novelist Mór Jókai was only briefly mentioned in October, 1904, five months after his death: "Ce fut donc Jokai à lui seul qui fit connaître le génie magyar hors de sa patrie." In the same time, during the days preceding the breakout of the First World War, the Parisian dailies often discussed the political crisis of the AustroHungarian Monarchy and its international consequences on their front pages. 3 The Société des Artistes Français, which was founded by Jules Ferry in 1880, split into two ten years later. In reaction to the conservatism of their elder fellow members, Meissonnier and Puvis de Chavannes initiated the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Nevertheless, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts soon became an institution of official art. Several critics set the "sleepiness" of the official salons against the "pulsating" of the Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants. Some, among them the great advocate of the Salon d'Automne, Charles Morice, advocated that the Société des Artistes Français should simply cease to exist: "Le Salon des Artistes Français est une institution périmée, moralement abolie, et dont il faut souhaiter pour le plus tőt la disparition naturelle." Mercure de France, 16 June 1906, 733. 4 It was founded in June, 1883 by those two hundred artists, who were refused by the jury of the Artistes Français' Salon, among them Signac, Seurat, Cross and Odilon Redon, who later became the first chairman of the Société des artistes indépendants; "No jury, no prices!" was its slogan. Beginning with 1901, following a rough start and several relocations, the Salon des Indépendants was held in the large green houses, which were built for the 1900 Universal Exhibition and stood on Place de l'Aima, near to Coursla-Reine. Since there was neither a jury nor any selection, there were great differences in the quality of the works on show. Masterpieces and trash were crammed together, without any concept, of which the press reported from time to time: "Prenez garde à la peinture! 6000 oeuvres sont exposées," was the telling title of Apollinaire's review of the Salon des Indépendants in 1900, which he published in L'Intransigeant on 18, 19 and 22 March. 5 The Salon d'Automne was founded in 1903, upon the initiation of the architect Frantz Jourdain, who became its first chairman. Since