Oil on wood; 23.5 x 32.5 cm.

Hungarian painter. After studying in Munich and Paris, he settled down in Budapest, his native town, where he was first engaged in illustrations, then in studies of heads ("Hungarian Peasant Woman") and portraits. He was famous for his portraits which were as accurate as photos. Even his larger pictures had a miniature-like treatment of textures and details of faces. He was a typical representative of the so-called Art Gallery naturalism. He ran a private art school in Budapest for some time.

He was awarded several prizes. He became a teacher of the Art School, Budapest in 1928. His major works include "Gyula Rózsavölgyi", "Female Nude in Workshop", "István Kléh" (1920), "G.H. Becker, Minister of Education, Prussia" (1932), "Árpád Ódry as Hamlet" and "Self Portrait", all in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery.

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Oil on canvas; 47.5 x 37 cm.


Hungarian painter. After years of study in Pest, Vienna and Rome, he painted a lot of altar pictures in dry academic style under the influence of the Italian Renaissance (Roman Catholic church in Sajószentpéter), historic pictures ("Árpád is Raised on the Shield") and portraits ("The Orczy Family", "Pál Szemere", etc.). He also copied pictures by Italian, Spanish and Dutch masters.

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Oil on wood; 26 x 20.5 cm.

Hungarian painter. After studying in Munich and Paris, he settled down in Budapest, his native town, where he was first engaged in illustrations, then in studies of heads ("Hungarian Peasant Woman") and portraits. He was famous for his portraits which were as accurate as photos. Even his larger pictures had a miniature-like treatment of textures and details of faces. He was a typical representative of the so-called Art Gallery naturalism. He ran a private art school in Budapest for some time.

He was awarded several prizes. He became a teacher of the Art School, Budapest in 1928. His major works include "Gyula Rózsavölgyi", "Female Nude in Workshop", "István Kléh" (1920), "G.H. Becker, Minister of Education, Prussia" (1932), "Árpád Ódry as Hamlet" and "Self Portrait", all in the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery.

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Oil on canvas; 121 x 160 cm.

Baron László Mednyánszky or Ladislaus Josephus Balthasar Eustachius Mednyánszky. Mednyánszky, the painter-philosopher, is one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of Hungarian art. Despite an aristocratic background, he spent most of his life moving around Europe working as an artist. Mednyánszky spent considerable periods in seclusion but mingled with people across society - in the aristocracy, art world, peasantry and army - many of whom became the subjects of his paintings. His most important works depict scenes of nature and poor, working people, particularly from his home region in Kingdom of Hungary. He is also known as a painter of Slovak landscape (Upper Hungary) and Slovak folk. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Mednyánszky was in Budapest. He worked as a war correspondent on the Austro-Hungarian frontlines in Galicia, Serbia and the southern Tirol. In the spring of 1918 he returned to Strážky to recover from war wounds. After spending some time working in Budapest, Mednyánszky died in poor health in the spring of 1919, in Vienna.

Mednyánszky's works were largely in the Impressionist tradition, with influences from Symbolism and Art Nouveau. His works depict landscape scenes of nature, the weather and everyday, poor people such as peasants and workmen. The region of his birth, north-eastern part of the Kingdom of Hungary), part of Austria-Hungary (today Slovakia) was the site and subject of many of his paintings; scenes from the Carpathian Mountains and the Hungarian Plains are numerous. He also painted portraits of his friends and family, and images of soldiers during the First World War whilst working as a war correspondent.

His works are currently displayed in the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava and Strážky chateau, which was donated to SNG by his niece Margita Czóbel in 1972. A lot of his works are displayed in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest as well. A large number of his works were destroyed during the Second World War. In 2004 a New York gallery was host to a show of about 70 19th- and early 20th-century Hungarian paintings, and a few works on paper, from the collection of Nicholas Salgo, a former United States ambassador to Hungary. The exhibition's title, Everywhere a Foreigner and Yet Nowhere a Stranger, was drawn from the diary of the 19th-century Hungarian painter Baron László Mednyánszky.

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Oil on canvas; 60 x 47.5 cm.

An outstanding personality of Hungarian romantic painting, one of the most important exponents of Hungarian history painting. Between 1851 and 1855 he studied at the Academy of Vienna, then in Munich Székely's same became inseparable from Hungarian history painting. He depicted chapters from the stormy past of the Hungarian nation, but in the same time he always had something genuine to say to the people of his own time. "The Discovery of Louis Il's Dead Body", "Women of Eger", "Mohács", "Ladislas V" are among the most important of his history paintings.

His lyric genre painting started to blossom during the 1870s, "The Life of the Woman" is circle belonging to this period and genre. "Ballerina", "Happy Mother", "Lowers in the Boat" are his most beautiful genre paintings. In the same time be also painted portraits, among others such masterpieces as his early "Self-portrait" and "Miss Mesterházy".

After the 1880s Székely also started to paint murals. His most famous murals can be found in Matthias Church, in the Cathedral of Pécs, in the Budapest Opera, and in the Kecskemét Town Hall.

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