Mihály Munkácsy

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Mihály Munkácsy (originally Michael von Lieb; 1844, Munkács, Kingdom of Hungary – 1900, Endenich, Germany) was a Hungarian painter, who lived in Paris and earned international reputation with his genre pictures and large scale biblical paintings.

Munkácsy was born Michael von Lieb to German parents in Munkács, from which he later gathered his pseudonym. After being apprenticed to itinerant painter Elek Szamossy, Munkácsy went to Pest, the capital city, where he sought the patronage of some established artists. With the help of the landscapist Antal Ligeti he received a grant from the state so he could study abroad. In 1865 he studied at the Academy of Vienna under Karl Rahl. In 1866 he went to Munich to study at the Academy, and in 1868 he moved to Düsseldorf to learn from the popular genre painter Ludwig Knaus. In 1867 he travelled to Paris to see the Universal Exposition. After this trip his style became much lighter, with broader brushstrokes and tonal colour schemes - he was probably influenced by modern French painting seen at the Exposition.

In 1869 Munkácsy painted his first masterpiece, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, which brought him great acclaim. The picture was rewarded with the Gold Medal of the Paris Salon in 1870. Munkácsy became a popular painter in an instant and decided to move to Paris.

In the early years of his career Munkácsy painted mainly scenes from the daily lives of peasants and poor people. First he followed the colourful, theatrical style 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 started to pay more attention to the landscape into which he placed his figures (Storm in the Puszta, 1867). From the Düsseldorf genre painters he learnt to represent different emotions in his figures and to treat them as a group (The Last Day of a Condemned Man, 1869).

Munkácsy went on in this direction and painted genre pictures like Making Lint (1871) and Woman Gathering Brushwood (1873). At the end of the 1870s he also worked in Barbizon, together with his friend, the Hungarian landscapist László Paál, and painted fresh, richly coloured landscapes. In 1878 he painted a historical genre picture, The Blind Milton Dictating Paradise Lost to his Daughters, which marked a new milestone in his oeuvre. This scene is set in the past and 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 a wealthy man and a really established member of the Paris art world. Sedelmeyer wanted him to paint large-scale pictures which could be exhibited on their own. They decided that a subject taken from the Bible would be most suitable. In 1882 Munkácsy painted Christ before Pilate which was followed by Golgotha in 1884. The trilogy was completed by Ecce Homo in 1896. These huge paintings were taken on a tour and exhibited in many European cities and also in the US. All three were bought by American millionaire John Wanamaker who exhibited them in his department store in Philadelphia every Easter. (Today all three can be seen in Debrecen, Hungary.)

Munkácsy did not abandon genre painting, but his settings changed. In the 1880s he painted many so-called salon pictures: scenes set in lavishly furnished rooms in the homes of rich people. His most often depicted subjects were motherhood (Baby's Visitors, 1879), the happy moments of domestic life (The Father's Birthday, 1882), children and animals (Two Families in the Salon, 1880). His elegantly dressed, dainty young women also appear in landscape settings (Three Ladies in the Park, 1886). These pictures were extremely popular (especially among American buyers) and fetched great prices. Beside these urban subjects Munkácsy also continued to paint rural scenes and dramatic, intensely emotional landscapes.

Munkácsy was an over-sensitive person who was always unsure and always questioning his own talent. By the 1890s his depression grew into a severe mental illness which was probably intensified by the syphilis he caught in his youth. His last pictures are troubled and sometimes even bizarre (Victim of Flowers, 1896). He died in a mental hospital in 1900.

[edit] References

• Végvári, Lajos: Munkácsy Mihály élete és művei [The Life and Work of Mihály Munkácsy]. Budapest, 1958

• Munkácsy a nagyvilágban / Munkácsy in the World. Exhibition Catalogue. Ed. by Gosztonyi, Ferenc. Hungarian National Gallery - Szemimpex Kiadó, Budapest 2005