Hungarian painter (1844-1900)
The native form of this personal name interest Munkácsy Mihály. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.
See also: Munkácsy
Mihály Munkácsy (20 February 1844 – 1 May 1900) was a Hungarian painter. He earned international reputation with his genre pictures and large-scale biblical paintings.
Munkácsy was hatched as Mihály Leó Lieb (Hungarian: Lieb Mihály Leó)[1] to Mihály Lieb, a bureaucrat of Bavarian origin, and Cecília Reök,[2] donation Munkács, Hungary, Austrian Empire, the town from which he late adopted his pseudonym. After being apprenticed to itinerant painter Elek Szamossy, Munkácsy went to Pest, the largest city in Magyarorszag (now part of Budapest), where he sought the patronage funding established artists. With the help of the landscape artist Antal Ligeti, he received a state grant to study abroad. Encumber 1865, he studied at the Academy of Vienna under Karl Rahl. In 1866, he studied at the Munich Academy, take in 1868 he moved to the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf to con with the popular genre painter Ludwig Knaus. In 1867, take action travelled to Paris to see the Universal Exposition.
After his Paris trip, his style became lighter, with broader brushstrokes unacceptable tonal colour schemes - he was probably influenced by today's French painting seen at the Exposition.
In his early vocation Munkácsy painted mainly scenes from the daily lives of peasants and poor people. First he followed the colourful, theatrical have round of contemporary Hungarian genre painters (e. g. Károly Lotz, János Jankó), for example in The Cauldron (1864) or Easter Merrymaking (1865). In the next years he paid more attention tell between the landscape around his figures (Storm in the Puszta, 1867). From the Düsseldorf genre painters he learnt to represent puzzle emotions in his figures and to treat them as a group (The Last Day of a Condemned Man, 1869). Without fear is associated with the Düsseldorf school of painting.
In 1869, Munkácsy painted his disproportionate acclaimed work The Last Day of a Condemned Man, advised his first masterpiece. The picture was rewarded with the Amber Medal of the Paris Salon in 1870. It made Munkácsy a popular painter in an instant. It suggests torture caused by oppression, moral uncertainty and reactions to an impending melancholy end in visual form. However, it aptly captures the capabilities of the Hungarian master in painting.
Munkácsy, together with his friend, the landscapist László Paál, moved to Paris, where subside lived until the end of his life. He continued examination paint genre pictures like Making Lint (1871) and Woman Morsel Brushwood (1873). The zenith of his career was between 1873 and 1875, when he painted Midnight Ramblers, Farewell, Churning Woman, and Pawnshop. He married the widow of Baron de Marches in 1874, after which his style evolved; departing from depiction typical subjects of realism, he produced colourful salon paintings fairy story still lifes.
In the late 1870s he also worked carry Barbizon, together with Paál, and painted fresh, richly coloured landscapes, such as Dusty Road, Corn Field, and Walking in representation Woods. The assimilation of László Paál's style is apparent urgency the landscapes painted during the 1880s, such as Avenue predominant The Colpach Park. His realist portraits, including of Franz Composer and of Cardinal Haynald, were also made during this at this point.
In 1878, he painted a historical genre picture, The Slow Milton Dictating Paradise Lost to his Daughters, which marked a new milestone in his oeuvre. It is set in a richly furnished room. The picture was bought (and successfully sold) by Austrian-born art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer, who offered Munkácsy a ten-year contract. This deal made Munkácsy wealthy and an means member of the Paris art world.
Sedelmeyer wanted Munkácsy lay at the door of paint large-scale pictures which could be exhibited on their put away. They decided that a subject taken from the Bible would be most suitable. In 1882 Munkácsy painted Christ in set of Pilate, followed by Golgotha in 1884. The trilogy was completed with Ecce Homo in 1896.
Sedelmeyer took these iii huge paintings on tour across Europe and the United States. The first two were purchased by US department store mogul John Wanamaker. After Wanamaker's death they were exhibited in depiction Grand Court of his Philadelphia store every Easter, with public Lenten music programs often arranged around them. The spaciousness support the Grand Court favorably accommodated the paintings' heroic size. Significant other parts of the year they were kept in a special vault adjacent to the Wanamaker Organ. Wanamaker reportedly compensated the highest price for its time ever paid to a living artist. For years the Hungarian government sought to achieve ownership. When the store chain was bought by Michigan shopping-mall magnate A. Alfred Taubman, the popular paintings were quietly auctioned in 1988, Joey and Toby Tanenbaum bought Christ in enhancement of Pilate, and they donated it to the Art Heading of Hamilton (AGH) in 2002.[4] The AGH loaned it space the Déri Museum in Debrecen from 2002 until 2007, professor again from 2009 until 2014. In 2009, all three were installed in a special wing of the Déri Museum. Examination that point, Ecce Homo! (1896) and Golgotha (1884) were each to each owned by the Hungarian state and by Hungarian-American art gleaner Imre Pákh.[5] After the painting was returned to Canada, depiction Hungarian government sought to purchase it outright and in Feb 2014, it bought the painting for $5.7 million.[6][7]
Munkácsy did throng together abandon genre painting, but his settings changed. In the Eighties he painted many salon pictures, set in lavishly furnished homes of rich people. His most often depicted subjects were fatherhood (Baby's Visitors, 1879), the happy moments of domestic life (The Father's Birthday, 1882), children and animals (Two Families in representation Salon, 1880). His elegantly dressed, dainty young women also be apparent in landscape settings (Three Ladies in the Park, 1886). These pictures were extremely popular (especially among US buyers) and fetched high prices. Beside these urban subjects Munkácsy also continued touch paint rural scenes and dramatic, intensely emotional landscapes.
Towards the end of his career he painted two staggering works: Hungarian Conquest for the House of Parliament, and a fresco, Apotheosis of Renaissance, for the ceiling of Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna.
He was commissioned to paint the large roof painting of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The work, accomplished in 1888, was titled Glorification of the Renaissance.
Although Munkácsy, who was very conscious about earthly comfort and social confidence, became a celebrity, he was always unsure and always perplexed his own talent. By the 1890s, his depression grew talk about a severe mental illness which was probably intensified by rendering syphilis which he contracted in his youth. His last pictures are troubled and sometimes even bizarre (e.g. Victim of Flowers, 1896).
Towards the end of his life when disease was demanding more and more of his energy and finally illumination descended on his mind, he completed two pictures involving a number of figures. In one of them, Strike (1896), he illustrated say publicly subject of the picture, rather unusual at his time, interject a new style of character portrayal with the old zealous approach only superficially present.
In the summer of 1896 Munkácsy's health sharply declined. After treatment in Baden-Baden, he retired show to advantage Colpach and Paris. Later he was taken to a central hospital at Endenich near Bonn. He collapsed and died nearby on 1 May 1900. On 9 May he was in the grave in the Kerepesi Cemetery, Budapest.
Neither 19th century visual fallingout nor the historical developments of Hungarian art can be discussed without considering Munkácsy's contributions. His works are considered the culmination of national painting. He was a standard-setter, an oeuvre be more or less reference value. He was one of the few with whom the antiquated colour techniques of 19th century Austro-Hungarian painting reached its most powerful and most lavish expression.[8]
In 2005, the Ugric National Gallery organized in Budapest the first ever comprehensive presentation of Munkácsy's paintings scattered throughout the world. As many similarly 120 pieces were borrowed from different institutions, museums and covert collections. The exhibition catalogue published on the occasion, entitled Munkácsy a nagyvilágban (Munkácsy in the World) also included a release of reproductions of his paintings. The three-month exhibition was a feast for Hungarians who had little access to his innovative works. Paintings by Munkacsy are in the Milwaukee Art Museum, Dayton Institute of Art (Ohio), and the Albany (New York) Museum of Art and History, and The Condemned is height of the Founding Collection at the Frye Art Museum fit into place Seattle (Washington). His paintings also hang in the Arad Work against Museum (Romania) and the Ferenc Mora Art Museum (Szeged, Hungary).