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Art in the 19th Century

Our exhibition presenting 19th-century art surveys the work of almost 100 years, beginning in the late 18th century. Here we can meet with almost all the important works from the time of National Romanticism that have for generations determined the national visual memory. Including such major emblematic works of historical painting as ‘The Women of Eger’, ‘The Mourning of László Hunyadi’ and ‘The Christening of Vajk’, the most significant historical paintings by Viktor Madarász, Mór Than, Sándor Liezen-Mayer, Bertalan Székely, and Gyula Benczúr fill two impressive rooms on the first floor. In the adjacent rooms the visitor can see landscapes by Károly Markó; sometimes melancholy, sometimes spicily erotic Biedermeier genre pictures; landscapes showing different regions of Hungary, and the best-known achievements of national portrait painting. As well as major works by József Borsos, Miklós Barabás, Mihály Zichy, Gyula Benczúr, and Bertalan Székely, especially exciting units of the exhibition are Gábor Melegh’s Schubert portrait and Károly Lotz’s Academicism that borders on Art Nouveau. A separate room presents the work of the greatest renewers of 19th-century Hungarian art: Pál Szinyei-Merse, Mihály Munkácsy and László Paál. Szinyei-Merse’s creations ‘Picnic in May’ and ‘Woman in Mauve’ qualify as the most known and the most frequently reproduced works in the whole of Hungarian painting. Munkácsy’s early Realism is represented by ‘Linen-Shredders’ and ‘Condemned Cell’, while almost every important work by the short-lived László Paál is on display. The one-time ballroom of the palace displays works of Naturalist and early plein-air painting that in many instances paved the way to Modernism. Works by László Mednyánszky, Géza Mészöly, Lajos Deák-Ébner, Simon Hollósy, and István Csók form the backbone of this unit. Including ‘Shepherdess’ by István Ferenczy, ‘Melancholy Shepherd’ by Miklós Izsó and works by Alajos Stróbl and György Zala, the sculptures on show fit in organically with the themes of the various rooms.