A N N A SZINYEI MERSE
Periods, Masters, Styles, Themes...: 19th-Century Painting in the National Gallery
Slowly recovering, reviving from the catastrophic consequences of the Second World War, it was only in the 1970s and 1980s that European culture states reached a stage where they could one by one set up permanent exhibitions of their national art as indis pensable means of self-representation in reconstructed or newly designed museum buildings. Displays on the 19 century, which had had a fundamental role in the unfolding and flowering of na tional art, attracted particular attention. In the case of larger groups of buildings, such collections were usually housed in separate wings, or, when the selected material and the size and character of the building chosen enabled it, 19 -century art was exhibited in separate venues, such as the Blessed Agnes Convent (opened in 1980) in the case of the Prague National Gallery or the famous Sukiennice (Drapers' Hall) - upholding an old tradition but mod ernizing the exhibition - in the case of the Krakow National Mu seum. Playing a key role in Central European art, Munich, from as early as 1853, had the particular advantage of the Neue Pinakothek, the dream of an art-loving Bavarian king, the first European museum built exclusively for contemporary art. It was destroyed in bombings in 1945, but rebuilt and furnished to meet state-of-the-art museological requirements in 1981. Eberhard Ruhmcr, the head of the team formulating the concept of the per manent exhibition covering the period between 1780 and 1910, sought to emphasize the diversity of the 19 century, his aim being among others to be able to present not only the formal features of the various tendencies, but also their depths of content. Investi gating iconographie, iconological and even sociological, political and other connections in paintings, the new generation of re searchers would no longer be satisfied by selections focussing al most exclusively on impressionism according to the principles laid down primarily by Hugo von Tschudi. In the extraordinarily complex and often contradictory 19 century, certain aspirations cropped up quite early, then went dormant for some while and came to fruition much later. Some masters made surprising inno vations early in their careers, but later compromised themselves or became uninteresting, while others took the opposite way. Unex pected breakthroughs and standstills and most of all simultane ous diversity were characteristic of the period, in which the more or less clear-cut linearity of former centuries no longer asserted it self. To pick out as an example a period of Munich painting par ticularly interesting for us Hungarians, Dr. Ruhmer brought back - together with some of their minor compositions - monumental historical paintings by Kaulbach, Piloty and Ramberg on to the museum's walls. A thoroughly selected collection of genre paint th
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ings and portraits by the fashionable painters of the Gründerzeit (such as Lenbach, Keller, Diez) also found its way into the exhi bition. The possibility of comparison with official art also put the anti-academic work of Leibi and his circle, which had always re ceived emphasis, the highly idiosyncratic Hans von Marées or Böcklin and Feuerbach in a more refined light. It is perhaps enough to show how far revision in the apprecia tion and display of 19 -century art was a world-wide phenomenon in the 1980s by referring to Professor Robert Rosenblum of New York who repeatedly emphasized after the 1986 opening of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris the importance of reappraisal, which France had at last also joined. "There has never been so radical a change in the history of art as in our conception of the 19 century. What has been going on in the past twenty years amounts to a rev olution against a former revolution. The modernist perspective still dominating in the middle of the 20 century has by now lost its positions in face of the post-modernist reconstruction of the 19 century," he wrote. In his opinion, the work of an unbeliev able number of lesser or greater artists who have come to be known from the most different quarters of the world, the spread of photography or the flood of visual information in the popular press of the period - to mention only a few of the newly explored aspects - had had an immense influence on the work of the great est artist idols (such as the impressionists) who had been treated almost in isolation formerly, but ought no longer to be judged without this wider context. There is no museum building in all the world as large as to be able to present all the works of art that it should according to the principles outlined above. As ever, selection is unavoidable, as it was in the case of the Musée d'Orsay. However, the museum, by including all branches of art - i.e., apart from painting, sculpture, graphics, and applied art, also architecture and urbanism, book design, press, cinema, and, through its regular concerts, even music - in the scope of its collection and interest, it provides more comprehensive a picture of the roughly half a century between 1848 and 1906 than any museum before (as is well known, works of the first half of the 19 century were left behind in the Louvre). Wherever it could, it sought to separate in space the various branches of art. Partly as a result of this, it could not increase the number of paintings in the desired measure, though it drew on a much wider range of works than ever before. According to the concept elaborated by Michel Laclotte and Françoise Cachin and their colleagues, all stylistic groups and all major painters, in cluding some foreign ones, were to be represented at least by way th
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1. Historical paintings by Bertalan Székely and Viktor Madarász mixed in
2. Historical paintings related to the Munich School (Benczúr,
with other genres and styles in the building of the High Court, late 1950s
Liezen-Mayer, Székely) on view in the present exhibition of the HNG
of indication, though they tried to avoid mixing the various sty listic tendencies. And they were particularly careful to clearly sep arate in spaces also marked by levels the avant-garde of the period, impressionism and post-impressionism from not so inno vative tendencies (i.e. naturalism and symbolism). They kept the best skylight halls for the avant-garde they themselves appreci ated most. Still, their cautious attempt to exhibit after a long break a few works by academic and eclectic artists or others who had been supported by official circles (e.g. Couture, Chassériau, Cabanel, Bouguereau), which was important in view of presenting the context of the innovators, elicited charges of supporting kitsch from various groups of critics and intellectuals. The calls men tioned above by experts of 19 -century art history for total dis plays of the period did not meet full approval from all quarters at that time, but the past two decades have resulted in a kind of ac quiescence. Nevertheless, penetrating analyses of this amazingly creative and prolific century have continued to be pursued in tem porary exhibitions, catalogues, essays and monographs in France and elsewhere, and they might very well yield surprising results for many of us. In this survey, I need not dwell on the problems that many have brought up, namely: periodization, the presence of foreign artists and that certain paintings might not have found their most appropriate places in the not always fortunate shaping of spaces in the railway-station-turned-exhibition-hall; these issues would each require separate studies. With these examples, I wished to allude to how far our own 19 -century exhibition is imbedded in the European context. When the author of this paper was first offered the honourable opportunity of participating - with my colleague, Zsuzsanna Bakó in the elaboration of the concept of the permanent exhibition of the 19 century in the Hungarian National Gallery back in 1985, she had not had the chance of seeing the new building of the Neue Pinakothek in Munich, but did maintain connections established earlier with the curator Eberhard Ruhmer, who advised her on the principles of arranging their display. I had studied 19 -century ex hibitions first in Eastern Europe, then I had the opportunity to do so in Western Europe (in Munich and Paris, too). I also had rec ollections from before 1957 of the halls of the Museum of Fine Arts frequently visited in my childhood. In 1964-65 I myself con ducted several gallery presentations as a university student on museological practice and later as an employee in the Hungarian
National Gallery (then in the building of the former High Court, now housing the Museum of Ethnography in Kossuth tér). In the meantime, I developed an interest in director Elek Petrovics's pre war arrangement of the Museum of Fine Arts, which my parents would often recall with nostalgia. Having more thoroughly ac quainted myself with the stored and deposited material in the 19 and 20 - century collection of the National Gallery, from which I curated several exhibitions at external locations, I often rumi nated on how it would be possible to improve and make more complete the 19 -century exhibition set up temporarily when the Gallery was moved up into the Buda Royal Palace in 1975. The not quite fortunate facilities of the building and various other con straints gave us plenty to ponder over; however, the first plan we had made with Zsuzsanna Bakó already contained elements that could later be used in the final version. In the autumn of 1986, before the opening of the exhibition of the Hungarian National Gallery in Dijon, I stopped over in Paris for a few days. Seizing the opportunity, I tried to get into the still closed exhibition of the Musée d'Orsay and meet the curators working on the final stages of the arrangement, but even professional visitors were not per mitted entry before the official opening. I had to content myself with the personal discussions with the French colleagues and with the printed information given, which, however, proved to be very reassuring for our Budapest plan had had several features akin to that of the d'Orsay one without our prior knowledge of it. Fol lowing my return home, a professional debate took place again, the central issue of which was the placing of the historical paint ings and Pál Szinyei Merse's Picnic in May, this masterpiece of Hungarian plein-air painting. In respect of the former we modified our plans, and refined some of the details in other aspects, too. We had to limit our initially copious selection as arrangements in the rooms also changed. And then began the last-minute rush. The series of rooms displaying the works of Mihály Munkácsy and László Paál had been the first to open already in the summer of 1986. Unfortunately, the air-conditioned cabinet system inherited from the High Court building could still not be disposed of - this had to wait for another decade. In the course of 1987, the small Szinyei Merse room, the halls on the two sides of the space under the cupola and the U-shaped series of rooms were completed, and, when we were ready with the Ball Room, we had the official opening ceremony. In his opening speech, the retired general di-
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rector, Gábor Ö. Pogány, who had curated the first permanent 19 century exhibition of the National Gallery thirty years earlier, in terestingly made remarks very much resembling the ideas of Rosenblum referred to above, though bearing certain ideological overtones: "the art historians of the Hungarian National Gallery undertook a difficult task in arranging the permanent exhibition of 19 -century Hungarian art in the aggressive atmosphere of a sec tarian interpretation of modernism. The choir of the stern art crit ics of the past 60-80 years gradually incriminated the majority of the masters of the last century. They have made collectors and lovers of traditionally conceived artworks almost diffident. Con noisseurs have sometimes had to feel ashamed of the backward ness of our art. Under these intellectual conditions, what were the curators of the National Gallery to do with the 19 century? Well, just what they did with the selection they had decided to display. To present as comprehensive a picture of the material created be tween 1800 and 1900 as possible [... ] They have sought to show the development of the arts, their tendencies, their manifestations suit able for reflecting the culture of their environment from several dif ferent aspects, in an unbiased way [...] They have made a muster of the century as it actually took place on the stage of history." It was relieving to hear these words sympathizing with our concep tion, for it certainly was not respectful of the arrangements and se lections of our former head that had been standing for decades. The most important changes with respect to antecedents was that the new display, as opposed to all former exhibitions of the 19 century, sought to clearly separate the traditional and the in novative trends in Hungarian painting. The concept close to that of the Musée d'Orsay had been forced on us by the characteristics of the building, particularly its segmentalization. From the very outset, we wanted the exhibition to relate more organically to the existing baroque and 20 -century displays, so that the develop ment of Hungarian art could be observed in its whole process. Due to the fact that the visitor was to mount the stairs up to the first floor space underneath the cupola surrounded by monumen tal late baroque paintings, in front of Peter Krafft's monumental Zrínyi 's Charge from the Fortress of Szigetvár ( 1825), placing rep resentative 19 -century historical pieces in the halls on the two sides of this space seemed to make a logical sequence (previously, the first side hall had belonged to the baroque exhibition). Thus the monumental pictures and sculptures of the landing and the
cupola space received a more unified atmosphere; the changes in scale and period thus became less marked, and a more harmonic general impression is had as visitors mount up to the first floor. Wherever possible, we tried to base the exhibition on chronology, because this method facilitated rendering the lines of history, sty listic development and education perceptible. Thus, in the side hall that leads to Building D with its baroque and Enlightenment pictures, we placed the best work of the historical painters who had studied in Vienna and Paris, and removed their lesser works that had been on show earlier. (Colour Plate X V I I ) The side hall opposite came to room the paintings with a historical subject mat ter by the three Hungarian professors of the Munich academy (Sándor Wagner, Sándor Liezen-Mayer, Gyula Benczúr) and Bertalan Székely, and works by some of their pupils. (111. 2) This division also corresponds with chronology, moreover, by way of Munich, it creates a direct link with the introductory part of the ex hibition in Building B. As a solemn spatial organizer, Benczúr's The Recapture of Buda Castle in 1686 closes the space under the cupola. Though many have disputed this hanging, we still cannot think of a more worthy place for this large-scale painting. It had been in the aula of the High Court building, then was put among other historical pictures in the Ball Room of the Buda Royal Palace (111. 3), and it now consummates the representative atmos phere of the halls beside the space underneath the cupola. The rea son why we excluded hanging it in the Ball Room was because the historical work bearing the characteristics of romanticism and historicism would have been wedged in as an alien element among the innovative aspirations of the latter third of the century. (111. 4) Nor could it be put into the U-shaped sequence of rooms, because monumental-size pictures would have burst the internal propor tions and intimacy of the spaces there. In the Museum of Fine Arts, it was only at the time of Gábor Térey's rearrangement in 1912 that historical painting was provided a separate hall. Much like our predecessors, we believe in the mixed hanging of genres, but, in this case, due to the overall aesthetic effect of the exhibi tion and the reasons mentioned, we preferred to make an excep tion. Having been a central genre in the period of increasing national independence in Hungary, this emphasized treatment of historical painting seems all the more justified. Thus the significant works by artists between 1800 and 1900, who aspired to more or less uphold older pictorial conventions
3. Gyula Benczúr's The Recapture of Buda Castle and other historical
4. The present exhibition of late-19*-century innovative tendecies
paintings in the Ball Room of the Buda Royal Palace around 1980
in the Ball Room
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5. Hall of the Age of Reform in the building of the High Court, around 1960
6. In the first permanent exhibition in the Buda Palace, only screens were used to divide the U-shaped series of rooms. In the background to the left, a detail of István Ferenczy's Shepherdess can be seen. Photograph made around 1980
7. Neoclassical art at the present exhibition
and traditions, presented in the U-shaped series of rooms, were given a worthy and an organically related introduction by the parts of the exhibition around the cupola space. Through typical exam ples of portraits and landscapes - genres which dominated the be ginning of the century - , the genre paintings of the next decades, as well as one or two mythological and Biblical representations, we were also able to characterize the way larger stylistic groups yielded several variations according to subject matter. We also took into consideration the quantitative proportions of genres. The mixed hanging of genres facilitates a variegated general impres sion, and is highly effective in reflecting the overall view of art in a given period. Earlier on there had been only a few still lifes on show, we now selected some more of them, as we could allude to certain cultural historical moments through them (as for instance through Béla Schäffer's mid-century still life that depicts the porcelain statue of the famous dancer Fanny Elssler with a bou quet of roses around it). Space lacking, we could only hang works by lesser masters (such as János Hofbauer, Ferenc Pongrácz or Lipót Kerpel) when their presence was justified by the appear ance or the increasing importance of a type of picture or genre, or when they gave expression to a subject matter important for a particular period. Often as not, classicism, classicizing romanti cism, bourgeois romanticism or, to use its other name, Bieder meier and late romanticism were coupled with a certain degree of realism, and the majority of our historicist, academic artists made a virtue of their realistic approach. In this period of stylistic plu ralism, an artistic tendency was seldom formulated in its purity. In the new exhibition, the smaller units arranged to facilitate a better understanding show many of the variants observable within particular groups of styles. Furthermore, in our arrange ment, units beside each other, often perceivable from the same point of view, are capable of rendering the simultaneity of certain tendencies. However much reflection had to be expended on designing the arrangements in the sequence of rooms forming a U around the grand staircase and opening on to the space under the cupola on two sides, it offered opportunities for innovations compared to antecedents. Partition walls could be placed in the most appropri ate spaces for the groups of artworks selected; it was only the se ries of thick-set pillars that tied our hands. This meant great freedom compared to the restrictions of the halls and cabinets of the Museum of Fine Arts and the High Court, which are of dif ferent sizes but in a fixed order. The corridor-like longitudinal space beside the pillars, from where the different rooms open to the left, can have an important role, though, at first we had be lieved it would be a hindrance. For example, this was how we could place Károly Kisfaludy's work belonging to early Hungar ian romanticism on a sidewall beside the Neoclassicism Room the two contemporaneous tendencies are thus shown together but without the perturbed artistic world of Kisfaludy's landscapes dis turbing the calm overall impression of the space dominated by the neoclassicist sculptor István Ferenczy's Shepherdess. (Ills. 6—7) In the corridor, the pictures with an Italian subject matter refer to the Italian study tours of our painters, and also prepare the way for the masterpieces by Károly Marko Sr. in the adjoining room. On the opposite side, József Borsos's paintings call attention to the par allel Viennese relations (Colour Plate X V I I I ) , as precursors of which we hung the works of Gábor Melegh on pillars. Still on this side, there are a few pictures with orientalizing themes to at least
8. The late paintings of Károly Lötz now dominate the last section of the
9. Paintings of different sizes, genres and styles by Benczúr, Székely,
U-shaped series of rooms. Previously Szinyei Merse's pictures were on
Lötz, Liezen-Mayer and Dósa in the building of the High Court,
display here (see 111. 13).
around 1960
hint at the presence of this kind of subject matter, too. And so and so forth, always maintaining the possibilities of referring forward and back - but never distracting attention from the principle mes sage of the given space. In the central room, we for instance hung a realistic portrait and a peasant genre piece by Soma Orlai Petrich and Mihály Szemlér respectively from around 1860 as the di rect predecessors of the realist paintings by Munkácsy in the other wing. Similarly, by having a landscape by Antal Ligeti and Károly Telepy each in the last room, witnessing a more relaxed, fresher painterly vision, we were able to refer to the aspirations of the fol lowing generation that constitute the other major part of the exhi bition. As the visitor progresses section by section in the series of rooms, the major mid-century and later aspirations unfold, and greater opportunities open up to give more emphatic presentations of the works of seminal artists. In cases of oeuvres smaller in size or more unified in style, we managed to create sort of one-man units. I f the painter's life spanned several periods, we attempted to connect the stylistic periods to focal points characterizing each of them - as we did in the case of Károly Lötz and Bertalan Székely. (Ills. 8-9) Alongside them, a number of talented Hun garian painters had worked at home and abroad, of whose works the National Gallery owns a sizeable collection, and the arrange ment of Petrovics displayed many of them (e.g. Ottó Baditz, Fülöp László or Gyula Stetka). We were sorry to have had to leave most of them out in the lack of space in this series of rooms, but the work of better known artists could not have been excluded. How ever, our selection has been able show a wide panorama without overcrowding exhibition spaces. One of the reasons for being able to balance the various peri ods, styles, genres and subjects matter in the exhibition was that in the last hundred years museologists have been able to elimi nate the most painful wants in the 19 -century Hungarian collec tion." At the time of the opening of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1906, there had been no serious collection of material from the so-called Hungarian Age of Reform (1825—48). Apart from ex hibiting a disproportionately large number of paintings by the Markos (father and sons) and Károly Brocky, only a few pictures by Barabás and the lesser masters were displayed. A separate hall was provided for the work of Munkácsy and Paál together and a special cabinet for 43 (!) pictures by Géza Mészöly (many of them small-scale). Surprisingly, the group of painters emerging in the
decades before the opening had a numerous and wide-ranging presence - including even the Nagybánya, Szolnok and Gödöllő masters. Of the formerly neglected modern masters, Pál Szinyei Merse, Károly Ferenczy and Adolf Fényes were given an em phatic place by the hanging. As the collection increased, there was an ever growing need for re-arrangement. According to recollections, Gábor Térey's 1912 arrangement was the most crowded one. He had separate rooms for the Marko family, for Lötz, for Zichy, one for Munkácsy and Paál together, as well as one for historical painting. The most up-to-date and aesthetic se lection and display was curated by Elek Petrovics in 1920 - the post-war arrangements were later to draw much on it. He had sep arate halls for paintings by Székely, Munkácsy, Paál and Szinyei Merse. His extraordinarily successful principles and methods of acquisition facilitated creating an overall picture that was more variegated and comprehensive than any before. To return to our current exhibition, the visitor, when stepping out of the U-shaped sequence of rooms, finds himself among the historical paintings again, and this occasions him or her to sum up the material seen, to formulate a complex picture of the aca demic masters working in several genres. Continuing his visit in Building B, he can acquaint himself with the multi-faceted output of the new tendencies unfolding in the last third of the 19 century. This part of the building contains spaces with an even more di verse character than those mentioned earlier, and we had to try to make a virtue of the givens. As we were still unable to do away with the air-conditioned glass-case system, the paintings by Munkácsy had to be hung in this series of rooms; thus it was "only" through selection that we could provide a more modern picture of the great master, who had started out from realism, reached plein-air and even historicism. I tried to put up as many landscapes, head studies and sketches as possible instead of the genre pictures that had dominated previous arrangements, and kept only the best of these. And then, when it turned out after new chemical tests and restorations that the asphalt ground of the ma jority of Munkácsy's paintings did not inflict deterioration to the extent it had previously been thought to, and room air-condition ing was enough, the works could be freed from their air-condi tioned glass cases. Moreover, they could be directly lit, and thus we could discover long-hidden beauties. The new arrangement with its more modern overall picture has won the master many
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10. The air-conditioned glass-case system in the building of the
11. Detail of the rearranged Munkácsy rooms
High Court with paintings by Munkácsy and Paál, 1960s
new enthusiasts - as I have had occasion to note from both foreign and domestic echoes. (Ills. 10-11) László Paál is usually presented in one space with Munkácsy. When the National Gallery was opened in the building of the High Court, their works were put together in all three halls and even in the exit corridor (no one knows what this fragmentation was for). It was only Elek Petrovics's arrangement that had afforded them a separate hall each in the Museum of Fine Arts in 1920. This we could not do for technical exigencies, but I at least kept one room in the series together with the majority of the walls opposite ex clusively for Paál. (111. 12) In the adjacent room, I surrounded three emblematic Munkácsys with some of the masterworks of his friend - holding on to the well-proved method of our prede cessors in arranging the exhibition, Gábor Ö. Pogány and Éva Bodnár. My colleague, Zsuzsanna Bakó, could also have recourse to certain elements of the selection that had been employed in the High Court in her series of rooms displaying in particular the works of the Age of Reform. Director Pogány had had a larg ma terial to choose from, thanks especially to the well-researched ac quisitions policies of the Municipal Gallery, which had been directed by Jenő Kopp from 1933 to 1944 and later incorporated into the National Gallery. In other respects, we could no longer use the principles of mixed arrangement Pogány had used in accor dance with the ^ - c e n t u r y exhibition in the High Court. He had not set up any one-man room, had mixed styles, and had not even taken into account the academies putting the artists on their ways. His arrangement was no doubt beautiful, variegated, but it made the recognition of different aspirations, the orientation of more at tentive visitors and guides more difficult. For example, it mixed the work of Lötz, a master with Viennese connections, with that of Benczúr, who represented a quite different character, and of the other Munich-trained masters (111. 9); it mingled Szinyei Merse's paintings with those of Géza Mészöly and Béla Pállik. For my part, I could only imagine Mészöly in the company of Deák-Ébner and the early Szolnok artists - these, however, had been left out of Pogány's arrangement. With his Picnic in May (1873), Szinyei Merse had been such a lonely pioneer who now certainly deserved special treatment. We found him a place in a smaller space leading to the Ball Room, which facilitated a one-man Pál Szinyei Merse show. (Ills. 1314) Thus, apart from Munkácsy, the other master of ours who had 15
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had the greatest influence on 20 -century Hungarian painting, was afforded a gallery of his own. Being a small room with few wall surfaces, we had to have its windows bricked up. Lighting is therefore artificial, the colour-distorting effects of which could not be countered even after modernization, with lamps whose colour frequency is close to the sun. This problem does not arise with all artists, but Szinyei is one of our most colourful painters, and bad lighting has a distortive effect on his broad and intensive range of colours. The highly segmented ground plan of Building B facilitated a presentation outlining the most immediate artistic environment of the two school-creating great masters in the spaces adjoining theirs. This was how works by artists following in the footsteps of Munkácsy were placed at the exit of the Munkácsy Rooms. In the corridor between the Munkácsy Rooms and the Szinyei Room, I put up a small assortment of paintings by artists who had circled around Szinyei in Munich around 1870 and demonstrated an in terest in modern pictorial attitudes. His audacious colouring and relaxed treatment had influenced all these painters, though they all made their names as historical painters. The most surprising among them was Géza Dósa, especially after being able to strengthen his presence by a new acquisition in 2001 (Mother with Her Children, 1870). Szinyei Merse and his associates had tried their most daring innovations in ingenious little sketches, and we exhibited some of these in a glass case. On the wall nearest the Munkácsy Rooms, we hung the works of Sándor Wagner, the teacher of both great masters in Munich. Leaving the small Szinyei Room, we enter the space of the Buda Royal Palace whose post-war reconstruction is perhaps the most problematic. The former Ball Room with its great interior height is, in my view too, neither modern nor archaizing enough, and it is certainly difficult to accommodate it in its current form for exhibiting works of art (the idea of having it separated into two floors with a loft or otherwise has been brought up). It is no mere coincidence that we ourselves, as had our predecessors, first wanted to put up the monumental historical paintings in this space. After the changes in conception, we attempted the impos sible, creating a system of screens that enabled the presentation of different artistic groups and aspirations separately but also as con verging into a process. (Ills. 3^4) Lacking the possibility to at least partly brick up the many windows and doors of the room and to
improve the lighting, we could only assemble a somewhat frac tured display of works demonstrating the spread in Hungary of the new approach to nature and its various tendencies. Moreover, the selection of the works of the artists experimenting with the new is mostly comprised of small-scale pictures, and we could create units with appropriate proportions often only by hanging them one above the other. However, after the intimate plein airs of Mészöly and the early Szolnok paintings, we could operate with larger canvases by Mednyánszky and later painters. Apart from the better known Munich, Paris or Szentendre period paintings of the artists, who belonged more or less closely to the circle around Simon Hollósy, the less known naturalistic paintings of other painters of a similar outlook make the presentation of the period more complete. As in the case of the tradition-upholding trends in the other building, we sought to make references ahead and back in selecting and arranging the material of the innovators coming into their own after 1870. It is not possible to go into the details here. In the space following the Munkácsy Rooms, we displayed the socially sensitive works of the pupils and followers of the master; and, in the corridor running parallel to the Ball Room, we hung genre paintings and portraits of Munich- and Paris-trained real ists, which finely echo works in similar genres in the neighbour
ing rooms. For hanging in the smaller space beside the stairway, we selected fashionable but valuable works of the 1890s. As in the case of the Musée d'Orsay, some disapproved of the fact that we brought back from oblivion the names of some artists who had been quite popular in their times and even several decades after the opening of the Museum of Fine Arts, their works having been kept on its walls; but, after World War I I , they were not brought up from the depths of storerooms. We, however, thought it rea sonable to fill the vacuum around the greatest but seemingly iso lated masters by resurrecting their talented contemporaries who did produce outstanding works, and thereby present the wider context of the idolized celebrities. The only offence these wellexecuted realistic, naturalistic or plein-air pictures with a diversi fied subject matter ever committed was that they were deemed to belong to the frequently cursed so-called "Arts-Hall" (i.e. main stream) painting in vogue at that time. To bring up only one ex ample of how far it was necessary to make a more open, ideologically less motivated selection: everyone knew the name of Árpád Feszty, creator of a famous cyclorama, but the gallery of the nation would not honour him with the display of one single pic ture by him. This was why I chose his masterful Golgotha (1880), which still hangs opposite Munkácsy's work with the same sub ject matter, and stands the comparison. Several similar surprises could be listed from the last rooms of our exhibition. We have plenty of excellent, even large-scale pictures on store that are characteristic of the period, and it would be high time to display them at least at temporary exhibitions, as many other countries do in revealing the breadth and depth of their national cultures in exhibitions and in related books. The Warsaw National Museum may have been the most daring of all, for, in its perma nent exhibition, it has provided a separate hall for the monumen tal canvases of Polish academic painting next to the room of historical paintings; and the head of the university department of art history has published a survey of Polish salon painting - a ten dency which, with the exception of the one Munkácsy, has no re spect in Hungary. However, the end-of-the-century examples just mentioned can no longer be seen at our exhibition, as the mas terpieces of the Hungarian-Plains artists, Adolf Fényes, János Tornyai, Gyula Rudnay and especially József Koszta were re moved from the 20 -century exhibition due to rearrangements at the beginning of the new millennium, and could only be hung in
13. In the first permanent exhibition of the Buda Palace the last
14. Detail of the Szinyei Merse room in the present exhibition
12. We reserved a separate room for László Paál in the new exhibition
section of the U-shaped series of rooms was closed with Picnic in May by Pál Szinyei Merse. Photograph made around 1980
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the place of the former, as followers of Munkácsy. Several Szolnok paintings in the Ball Room were put away in stores to give room for the Mednyászkys left out from the floor above; due to similar reasons, we have had to add paintings produced in Nagybánya to the exhibits in the space occupied by the Hollósy circle, thereby also changing the original periodization of our 19 -century exhibition. It is only to be hoped that by furnishing the newly acquired Building A of the Buda Royal Palace, the 20 -century exhibition, exemplary as it is in its detailed and informative character, can present an even more extensive material. It is quite right that permanent exhibitions should be continually renewed to be able to reflect new scholarly results and changes in taste. th
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It had been a formidable, yet loveable task to set up the new 19 -century exhibition twenty years ago, and the colleagues who will change it according to their own concepts in the future will have to perform a task no less formidable. In contrast to most nations, Hungarian art-history writing and book publication still owe a wide-ranging series of studies providing in-depth treatment of this period or its particular issues and of monographs on individual artists. It therefore remains the responsibility of the Hungarian National Gallery to present as full a picture of the 19 century - particularly important to the nation - as possible, especially as it owns the most comprehensive and richest collection artworks from this period. The words of Elek Petrovics are as valid as ever: "This is our duty to not only ourselves, but universal culture, as well; for, from among the many tasks set by the latter, our most natural lot is to collect and study the material our own art has produced. This is a task no one else is going to perform in our stead, and this is the field where we can produce a rounded whole."' th
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6 Roscnblum, Robert. "Reconstruire la peinture du X I X siècle." In: Le déhat. March-May, 1987, no. 44, p. 85. The 192-page special issue o f the periodical prompted by the opening the Musée d'Orsay has an interesting section contrasting the often not at all favourable opinions o f several well-known specialists asked to present their views with those of the museologists who created and arranged the museum. 7 For a more detailed discussion of the project, see Laclotte, Michel. "Le projet d'Orsay". In: Le débat, March-May, 1987, no. 44, pp. 4-19; Pomian, Krzysztof. "Entretien avec Françoise Cachin - Orsay tel qu'on le voit." In: ibid., pp. 55-74; and the other studies of the issue. 8 Le rôle de 1 Ecole de Paris dans la peinture hongroise. Hôtel de Ville, Salle de Flore, Dijon, 1986. The Hungarian Institute in Paris also put up the exhibition, though in a smaller selection in the December o f thai year. 9 The type-written transcript of the speech recorded on tape on November 3, 1987. HNG Archive, inv. no.: 22796/1987. 10 I cannot dwell on the major theoretical and practical issues brought up by the exhibition which have not been discussed elsewhere. For a room-by-room guide published by the National Gallery see Bakó, Zsuzsanna, Anna Szinyei Merse, Antal Tóth and Viktória L. Kovásznai. Hungarian Painting and Sculpture in the Nineteenth Century. Guide to the Permanent Exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery. Budapest: Hungarian National Gallery, 1989. Unfortunately, like the 19 -century volume of the handbook series on Hungarian art history produced by the Hungarian Academy o f Sciences, the great work o f preparing the multi-authored catalogue of the National Gallery exhibition has also been left unfinished. A representative album by Zsuzsanna Bakó and Gabriella Szvoboda Dománszky (XIX. századi magyar művészet. Állandó kiállítás a Magyar Nemzeti Galeriéiban. Budapest: Kossuth Kiadó, 2004) sought to make up for this want with its short introductory essay but bounteous selection of reproductions. With regard to the first half o f the century, this is a sort o f "musée imaginaire", for it reproduces paintings that could not be displayed in the lack of space. It is a pity that this open-handed selection could not be proportionally continued due to the sheer size of the material the genuine flowering and artistic fulfilment produced after 1860. ,h
1 Kotrbová, M . A . and J. Kotalik et al. Peinture tchèque du XIX ' siècle. Guide de l'exposition au Couvent d'Agnès-la-Bienheureuse. Prague, 1980. 2 Porçbski, Mieczyslaw. Das Nationalmuseum in Krakow. Galerie der Polnischen Malerei und Skulptur des 19. Jahrhunderts in den Tuchhallen. Ein Führer durch die Sammlungen. Krakow, 1991. 3 Lenz, Christian. Die Neue Pinakothek München (Museen der Welt). Munich: C. H . Beck; The Neue Pinakothek Munich. London: Scala Books, 1989. p. 4.
11 Cf. Szinyei Merse, Anna. ,.The Collection o f Nineteenth-Century Painting." In: Idem ed. The Hungarian National Gallery. Budapest: Corvina, 1994, pp. 9-12. 12 See the register of the Modern Gallery o f the Museum o f Fine Arts published in 1906: A Modern Képtár lajstroma. Budapest: Szépművészeti Múzeum, 1906. In his introduction, Director Ernő Kammerer writes that Károly Ferenczy, Ferenc Paczka and Pál Szinyei Merse participated in the selection, and the curator was Bertalan Karlovszky. For a catalogue with descriptions see: Peregriny, János. Szépművészeti Múzeum. A Modern Képtár leíró lajstroma. Budapest: Szép művészeti Múzeum, 1906. (By 1910, it already had four reprints.) 13 A catalogue o f the Modern Gallery: Térey, Gábor and Zoltán Takács. A Modern Képtár katalógusa. Budapest: Országos Magyar Szépművészeti Múzeum, 1913. 14 See his publications on the new arrangement: [Petrovics, Elek]. " A gyűjte mények rendezése." In: Országos Magyar Szépművészeti Múzeum Evkönyvei I I I , 1921-1923, Budapest: Szépművészeti Múzeum, 1924, pp. 118-119; idem. Élet és művészet. N. p. [Budapest], 1937, pp. 149-154. Furthermore: "Az újjáren dezett Modern Képtár." In: Vasárnapi Újság, 1920, no. 12, p. 137; no. 14, pp. 161-164. 15 Magyar festészet a XIX. században. A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria első kiállítása. (Catalogue, introduced by Pogány, Ö. Gábor), Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 1957; Bényi, László. "L'exposition de la peinture hongroise du X I X siècle à la Galerie Nationale Hongroise." In: Bulletin de la Galerie Nationale Hongroise, no. II, Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 1960, pp. 93-96.
4 From 1896, Tschudi was the director o f the Berlin Nationalgalerie founded twenty years earlier, but was dismissed due to his modernist attitudes in 1909. Always rivalling Berlin, Munich immediately invited him to head the Neue Pinakothek. It was owing to him that the gallery acquired several impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces. 5 Ruhmer, Eberhard ed. Neue Pinakothek. Erläuterungen zu den ausgestellten Werken. Munich: Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, 1981, pp. 10-12.
16 Charaziriska, Elzbieta et al. Galéria malarstwa Polskiego. Przewodnik. Warsaw: Múzeum Narodowe w Warszawie, 1995, pp. 125-142; and Poprzçcka, Maria. Polskié malarstwo salonowe. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Artystyczne i Filmowe, 1991. 17 Petrovics. Élet és művészet, op. cit. (see Note 14) p. 149. First published: " A Szépművészeti Múzeum jövője. Az új igazgató munkaterve." In: Az Újság, 12 April, 1914. p. 35.
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NOTES
On the illustrations: The photographs of the former permanent exhibitions can be found in the Archive of the HNG. inv. nos.: 22001/1983 and 22134/1984. The present exhibition was photographed for the purpose of this publication in April 2008. 1
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Korszakok, mesterek, stílusok, témák. 19. századi festészet a múzeumban
Az 1970-80-as évek nagyszabású múzeumrekonstrukciói során számos európai országban fordultak megkülönböztetett figye lemmel a 19. századhoz mint a nemzeti művészetek kiteljesedé sében alapvető fontosságú időszakhoz. A magyar és a közép európai festészet szempontjából kulcsszerepet játszó München ben az 1945-ben lebombázott képtár helyén 1981-ben nyitotta meg kapuit a legmodernebb muzeológiai elvek alapján épült és berendezett Neue Pinakothek. Eberhard Ruhmer kurátor az 17801910 közötti évek sokféleségét kívánta hangsúlyozni, hogy a kü lönféle irányzatok formai jellegzetességein kívül azok tartalmi mélységei is jobban nyomon követhetők legyenek. Az ikonográ fiái, ikonológiai feltárások mellett a festményekben szociológiai, politikai és számos egyéb vonatkozásokat is kutató újabb nemze dékeket már nem elégítették ki a 20. század elején főként Hugo von Tschudi által képviselt, impresszionizmus-központú váloga tások. A rendkívül komplex és sokszor ellentmondásos 19. szá zadban bizonyos törekvések korán feltűnnek és hosszabb lappangás után csak később teljesednek ki. Egyes mesterek korai müveikben hoznak meglepő újításokat, aztán érdektelenné válnak - mások meg éppen fordítva.Váratlan előretörések és megtorpa nások, és főként a sokféleség egyidejűsége jellemzi a kort, amely ben már nem érvényes a korábbi századok könnyebben áttekinthető, hozzávetőleges linearitása. Ruhmer doktor például visszahozta a múzeumi falakra - az egykor divatos festők kisebb képein kívül - Kaulbach, Piloty és Ramberg egy-egy hatalmas történeti festményét. Az akadémizmus ellenében dolgozó és addig is mindig kiemelt Leibi és köre, vagy az egyéni utas Hans von Marées, illetve Böcklin és Feuerbach művészete szintén árnyal tabb megvilágítást kapott a hivatalos művészettel való összeha sonlíthatóság által. 1980 körül megváltozott a 19. századi művészet megítélése, ezért újszerű bemutatásának igénye világjelenség volt. Robert Ro senblum New York-i professzor a párizsi Musée d'Orsay 1986os megnyitását követően nem győzte hangsúlyozni ennek a revíziónak a szükségességét, mivel a 20. század közepén még uralkodó modernista nézőpont helyett a 19. század posztmoder nista rekonstrukciója vált időszerűvé (Le débat, 1987. 44. sz. 85.). Szerinte ugyanis a világ legkülönbözőbb pontjairól hihetetlen mennyiségben ismertté vált kisebb-nagyobb müvészegyéniségek teljesítménye, a fényképezés térnyerése vagy akár a korabeli po puláris sajtó vizuális információáradata - hogy csak néhány újab ban feltárt szempontra utaljunk - mind-mind óriási befolyást gyakorolt az addig szinte elszigetelten vizsgált müvészidolok
(mint például az impresszionisták) munkásságára is, akiket többé nem szabadna enélkül a szélesebb kontextus nélkül megítélni. A Musée d'Orsay valóban minden addiginál teljesebb összképet nyújtott a nagyjából 1848 és 1906 közé eső fél évszázad szinte összes művészeti ágáról, amelyeket egyébként tereiben igyeke zett egymástól elválasztani. Michel Laclotte, Françoise Cachin és munkatársaik koncepciója szerint - legalább jelzésszerűen - az összes stíluskör és minden jelentős festő jelen van, köztük j ó né hány külföldi is, de az egyes stílusirányzatok kevert bemutatását igyekeztek elkerülni. Arra pedig különösen vigyáztak, hogy egy mástól távoli szintekkel térben is világosan elkülönítsék a korszak avantgárdjának tekintett impresszionizmust és posztimpresszio nizmust a kevésbé újító tendenciáktól, melyekből ők is a koráb biaknál bővebben válogattak. Amikor 1985-ben Bakó Zsuzsannával kidolgoztuk a Galéria 19. századi állandó kiállításának új koncepcióját, már mindketten behatóan ismertük a vonatkozó gyűjteményrészeket és számos eu rópai múzeum e korszakbeli kiállításait. Elképzeléseinket össze vetettük az 1957-es Kúria-beli és az 1975-ös felköltözést követő, Budavári Palota-beli rendezésekkel, a háború előtti Szépművé szeti Múzeum magyar termeivel és a Károlyi Palota-beli Fővá rosi Képtár összeállításaival. Az épület nem túl szerencsés adottságai erősen megkötötték kezünket, mégis, első tervezetünk már számos olyan elemet tartalmazott, mely a végső változatban is megtartható volt. 1986 őszén, a Galéria dijoni kiállításának (Az École de Paris a magyar festészetben) rendezése előtt Párizsban sikertelenül próbáltam meg bejutni a még zárt Musée d'Orsay-ba, de a francia kollégáktól kapott szóbeli információk és írásos do kumentumok megnyugtattak, hiszen a mi budapesti tervezetünk - anélkül, hogy előzőleg ismertük volna a franciák koncepciójáttöbb ponton mutatott azzal rokon vonásokat. 1987 őszére felépült tárlatunk megnyitó beszédét a Galéria épp 30 évvel korábbi első állandó kiállításának rendezője, Pogány Ö. Gábor nyugalmazott főigazgató tartotta, akinek szavai érdekes módon a Rosenblumféle gondolatokra rímeltek. A nem kevés ideológiai felhanggal elmondott szövegben ugyanis erős hangsúlyt kapott, hogy a „mo dernség agresszív légkörében" a rendezők „sokoldalú aspektus ból, előítéletek nélkül mutatják meg áramlatok, művészek fejlődését". A 19. század összes korábbi, hazai bemutatásával szemben ezen az immár 20 éve fennálló kiállításon történt meg első ízben a magyar festészet hagyományos, valamint újító vonulatának ha tározott szétválasztása és ezáltal pontosabb értelmezhetősége.
A Musée d'Orsay megoldásával rokon koncepcióra minket is a rendelkezésre álló épületrészek adottságai - főként erős szétta goltságuk - szorítottak rá. Az addiginál szervesebben kívántunk kapcsolódni a már fennálló barokk, illetve 20. századi kiállítás hoz, hogy teljes folyamatában váljék érzékelhetővé művészetünk fejlődése. Kronológiára épülő kiállításunk a stílustörténeti vonal mellett az iskolázottságra is utal, így például a barokkhoz csatla kozó téregység a bécsi és párizsi tanultságú festők, a szemközti nyaktag pedig a müncheni kötődésű mesterek történelmi tárgyú festészetét fogadta be. Ez a tagolás München révén közvetlen öszszeköttetést biztosít a B épületi kiállításrész bevezető szakaszá val. A kupolateret ünnepélyes térszervezőként Benczúr hatalmas, Budavár visszavétele című festménye zárja, mintegy kiemelve a műfaj századbeli vezető szerepét. Az U alakú teremsorban a 19. század elején domináló portré és tájkép, majd az életkép legjellemzőbb példáin, valamint egy két mitológiai és bibliai ábrázoláson keresztül a nagyobb stílus körök alváltozatait szintén jellemeztük. A keverten akasztott műfajok mennyiségi arányaira is tekintettel voltunk, és a koráb ban mellőzött csendéletekből is beválogattunk néhányat. Kisebb mesterektől helyhiány miatt csak abban az esetben vehettünk be müveket, ha jelenlétüket egy képtípus, egy műfaj megjelenése vagy jelentőssé válása indokolta, illetve ha egy fontos téma nyert általuk kifejezést. A klasszicizmus, a klasszicizáló, a polgári és a késő romantika nem egyszer bizonyos fokú realizmussal társult, historizáló akadémikusaink zöme egyenesen erényt kovácsolt tár gya realisztikus megközelítéséből. A stíluspluralizmus korában a legritkább esetekben rajzolódott ki a maga tisztaságában egyegy stílustörekvés. A könnyebb értelmezhetőség céljából kiala kított kisebb egységeink többnyire külön-külön mutathatják be az egyes stíluskörökön belül megfigyelhető variációkat is. Bár mennyire sok vitát gerjesztett a díszlépcsőt U alakban körbevevő téregyüttes beépítése, mégis lehetőséget adott bizonyos újításra. A kiválasztott műtárgy-együtteseknek legjobban megfelelő he lyeken húzhattunk fel vendégfalakat, ez nagy szabadságot jelen tett a Szépművészeti Múzeum és a Kúria különböző méretű, de kötött sorrendű termeihez és kabinetjeihez képest. A pillérek mel letti folyosószerű hosszanti térben tudtuk például elhelyezni a klasszicizmus terme mellé az oldalfalra az azzal egykorú magyar kora romantika Kisfaludy Károly-féle megoldásait anélkül, hogy azok zaklatott művészi világa megzavarná a Ferenczy István Pásztorlánykája által uralt terem nyugodt összképét. Az olasz vo natkozású képek festőink itáliai tanulmányútjaira utalnak, és egy ben előkészítik a második teremben kifüggesztett id. Marko Károly-főműveket. Szemközt Borsos József festményei a párhu zamos bécsi kapcsolatokra hívják fel a figyelmet, melyek előz ményeiként Melegh Gábor képeit pillérekre akasztottuk. Ugyancsak oldalt látható néhány orientalizáló festmény, hogy legalább jelezzük ennek a tematikának is a jelenlétét. És így to vább, végig megtartva az oda-visszautalások, kitekintések lehe tőségét, de nem elvonva a figyelmet a termek fő mondani valójáról. Az U alakú teremsorból kilépő látogató megint a történeti fest mények között találja magát, és ez alkalmat ad arra, hogy a látot takat összegezve immár komplex képet alakíthasson ki magának a többféle műfajban és léptékben alkotó akadémikus mesterekről. Továbbhaladva a B épületben a 19. század utolsó harmadában k i bontakozott új törekvések igencsak változatos eredményeivel is merkedhet meg a néző. A klímás vitrinrendszer miatt meg kellett
tartani a Munkácsy-Paál-teremsort, így itt „csak" a válogatással lehetett az eddiginél modernebb képet adni a realizmustól a pleinairig, de a historizmusig is eljutó nagy mesterről és barátjáról: több tájképet és fej tanulmányt, vázlatot akasztottam az addig do mináló életképek helyett. Amikor aztán az újabb vegyi vizsgála tok és restaurálások eredményeképpen kiderült, hogy a Munkácsy-képek többségének aszfaltos alapozása nem olyan mérvű, mint azt előzőleg gondolták, és elegendő a teremklíma alkalma zása, a légkondicionált vitrinekből is kiszabadíthattuk a műveket. Paál Lászlót általában Munkácsyval azonos térben szokták be mutatni, egyedül Petrovics Elek példaszerű 1920-as rendezése tisztelte meg mindkettőjüket a Szépművészeti Múzeum egy-egy termével (valamint még Székelyt és Szinyeit). Legalább egy kis termet én is Paál számára tartottam fenn, a szemközti összekötő falszakaszok tekintélyes részével együtt. A korábbi, Pogány Ö. Gábor-féle kevert rendezési elvet, amely már a Kúria legelső 19. századi kiállítását is meghatározta, egyáltalán nem kívántuk kö vetni. A főigazgató ugyanis egyetlen monografikus termet sem rendezett be, keverte a stílusokat, a festőket útjukra bocsátó aka démiákat sem vette figyelembe. Változatosak voltak ezek a termek, de megnehezítették a különféle törekvések pontosabb felismerését; Szinyeit például Mészöllyel és Pállikkal vegyítette. Mészölyt én leginkább Deák-Ébner, illetve a korai szolnoki fes tők közelében képzeltem el. Szinyei Merse Pál pedig Majálisával olyan magányos úttörő volt, aki valóban külön kezelést érdemel. M i a helyét a Bálterein előtti kis teremben találtuk meg: Munkácsyn kívül a 20. századi magyar művészetre leginkább ható másik jelentős mesterünk nyerhetett így egyéni kiállítást. A két nagy is kolateremtő termeinek szomszédságában közvetlen művészi kör nyezetüket is sikerült felvázolni, így kerültek a Munkácsyteremsor kijáratához a mester nyomdokain járók festményei. A Munkácsy- és a Szinyei-termeket összekötő folyosóra pedig egy kis összeállítás készült az 1870-t megelőző és követő években Szinyei körül Münchenben kialakult baráti kör olyan müveiből, amelyekben már felcsillant a korszerű festői érdeklődés. E mű vészek mindegyikére hatott a mester merész kolorizmusa és ol dottabb előadásmódja, még ha amúgy történeti festőként is váltak híressé. Szinyei és társai a legbátrabb újításokat apró vázlatokon próbálták ki, ezekből is kiállítottam egy vitrinre valót. A folyosón attól a Wagner Sándortól is láthatók képek, aki mindkét mester tanára volt a müncheni akadémián. A kis Szinyei-teremböl a Budavári Palota háború után talán legproblematikusabban újjáépített terébe lépünk. A se nem eléggé modem, se nem eléggé archaizáló, hatalmas belmagasságú egy kori Báltermet mai formájában alig lehet alkalmassá tenni kiállí tás befogadására. Elődeinkhez hasonlóan kezdetben mi is a monumentális történeti képekben gondolkodtunk, de végül meg kíséreltük a lehetetlent, és olyan paravánrendszert készíttettünk, mely arányaival és tagolásaival többfajta törekvés és művészcso portosulás elkülönített, ugyanakkor mégis folyamattá összeálló bemutatását teszi lehetővé. Az új természetszemlélet hazai elter jedéséről és különféle tendenciáiról kissé töredezett együttest ala kíthattunk csak ki amiatt, hogy körben a sok ajtó és ablak részleges lefedésére és a világítás javítására sem volt lehetősé günk. Ráadásul az újjal kísérletező művészek többnyire kis méretű alkotásaiból való válogatás is nehézséget okozott, ezekből többet egymás alá- és fölé akasztva képezhettünk megfelelőbb léptékű együtteseket. Végül is Mednyánszkytól kezdve már nagyobb mé retekkel is gazdálkodhattunk. Ahogy a hagyományos vonulatnál,
úgy az újítók kiállításai is számos utalással, visszacsatolással él tünk az anyagválogatáskor és a rendezéskor. A korai szolnoki is kolához, illetve a Hollósy-körhöz szorosabban vagy lazábban tartozó művészek müncheni, párizsi vagy szentendrei korszaká nak ismertebb müvei mellett más rokon törekvésű festők eddig zömmel ismeretlen naturalisztikus képeivel tettük teljesebbé a korszakbemutatót. A szomszédos kisebb téregységekbe pedig az 1890-es évek divatos festőitől válogattunk. Olyan művészek nevét hoztuk elő a feledés homályából, akik saját korukban, sőt még a Szépművészeti Múzeum megnyitása utáni évtizedekben is nép szerűek voltak, képeik múzeumi falon függtek, de a háború óta raktárakban szunnyadtak. M i viszont időszerűnek láttuk, hogy a legnagyobb mesterek elszigeteltségét tehetséges kortársaik feltá masztásával oldjuk, s ezáltal szélesebb kontextusba állítsuk őket. így került kiakasztásra a híres körkép-festő Feszty Árpád remek Golgotája is - a Munkácsy-kép pendaníjaként azóta is állja az összehasonlítást. Más műveket viszont pár éve kénytelenek vol tunk az új 20. századi kiállításból kimaradt, általunk azonban fon
tosnak tartott képekre lecserélni. Ez természetes, az állandó kiál lításoknak is rendszeresen meg kell újulniuk, hogy tükrözni mdják az újabb kutatások eredményeit. Azt azonban nem szabad elfelejtenünk, hogy a magyar müvészettörténet-írás és -könyvki adás, a legtöbb nemzettel ellentétben, a mai napig adós a széles lá tószögű, ugyanakkor kellően részletes feldolgozást tükröző korszakismertetők, monográfiák és részlettanulmányok egész so rozataival, különösen a 19. századi művészet vonatkozásában. Tehát továbbra is a Magyar Nemzeti Galériáé a felelősség, hogy lehetőség szerinti teljességében mutassa be ezt a magyarság szá mára olyannyira fontos századot, ha már falai között őrzik a kor szak legátfogóbb gyűjteményét. Petrovics Elek örökérvényű szavaival: „ez kötelességünk nemcsak önmagunkkal szemben, hanem az egyetemes kultúrával szemben is, amelynek feladatai közül elsősorban saját művészetünk anyagának gyűjtése és fel dolgozása jutott nekünk természetes osztályrészül. Ez az a fel adat, melyet más nem végezhet el, s ez az a tér, amelyen kerek egészet érhetünk el" (Az Újság, 1914. április 12.).
