Hungarians make very good painters

I can’t be sure how long the Internet connection will last. So Illhavetotypefast.

Our trek through the Hungarian National Gallery on Monday made me wish that my colleague Julianne Crane had been with us. I was bored with it, mostly, until we reached the section featuring the 19th-century artists. That was where I found three artists whom I ended up liking as much as I do any of the French Impressionists.

The three are Kﾇroly Ferenczy (1862-1917), Paﾇl Lﾇszlﾗ (1846-1879) and Mihﾇly Munkﾇcsy (1844-1900).

Ferenczy achieved fame later than the other two. But paintings such as “Bathing Boys” (1902), “Beech Woods” (1908), “Morning Sunshine” (1905), “Evening Mood With Horses” (1899) and “Sermon on the Mount” (1896) show both a range of subject matter from the realistic to the allegorical. The lattermost painting puts Jesus on the mountain, preaching to a crowd of people, including children, attired in what must have been typical 19th-century dress – except for the guy sitting next to him, clothed in a full set of armor. One of the draws of the collection is Ferenczy’s “October,” his 1903 still life of a man standing in the shadow of a parasol, reading a newspaper – a testament to the artist’s ability to work with shade.

Laszlo was a pupil of Munkﾇcsy’s whose work was primarily landscape, including “October Wind” (1875) and Landscape with Cows” (1872).

Munkﾇcsy was the master, though, and the walls of the gallery boast dozens of his works. The ones I jotted down in my notebook include “Dark Stairs” (1871), “Sleeping Highwayman with a Candle” (1869) and “In Front of the House” (1869). But the work of his that you’re most likely to remember is “Churning Woman” (1872-73), a realistic work that captures the resignation of an aging woman who has spent a lifetime doing mundane, menial labor.

What I like most about all three of these artists is their ability, each in his own distinctive way, to capture the essence of life in just a few daubs of paint that, seen up close, look like mere splotches thrown on the canvas. But stand back a few feet, and the whole thing comes together in a way that suggests life without being a photographic representation of it.

But, then, I’m no art critic. Which is why I wish Julianne had been there. She could have told me what was what.