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The history of every nation is also reflected in its works of art. This is especially true for a people with such a difficult history as the Magyars. Gyula Benczúr was one of those artists who dedicated himself to taking snapshots of Hungary's past.
Born in 1844 in Nyíregiháza in the far east of the country, he moved with his family at the age of four to Kosice in present-day Slovakia, at that time still part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire as "Upper Hungary". Dual Monarchy. In Kosice he learned to draw from the Austrian history painter Franz Geyling, and from 1861 he studied painting at the Royal Bavarian Academy in Munich, for example with Karl Theodor von Piloty.
In 1870 a national competition for historical paintings was held in Hungary, Benczúr made his debut with the "Baptism of Stefan the Saint" (in original: Vajk megkeresztelése) and won at the first attempt. He returned to Munich, took on commissions from King Ludwig II and was a member of the "revolutionary" artists' association Allotria, whose best-known member today may well have been the caricaturist Wilhelm Busch. Benczúr certainly did not illustrate his "Max and Moritz" and companions, but he did illustrate some works by Friedrich Schiller. Some frescoes in the Munich City Hall and in the Maximilianeum - since 1949 seat of the Bavarian Parliament - are a co-production of Benczúr and Piloty.
Benczúr lived on Lake Starnberg until 1888, before returning to his home country to take up a professorship at the "School of Painting".
Benczúr painted portraits of kings, aristocrats and important contemporaries, but his speciality remained large-format "historical paintings" with plays of light and shadow. These include "The Farewell of Laszlo Hunyadi" (a Hungarian warrior betrayed and beheaded by his own king in 1457), "The Arrest of Francis II Rakoczy" (after the failed uprising of Hungarian nobles against the Habsburg dynasty in 1701) and the "Siege of Buda" (which ended in 1686 with the expulsion of the Ottomans from Hungary's later capital Budapest). In addition to antique (such as the death of Cleopatra or the death of Narcissus) or biblical themes ("Adam and Eve"), he also painted self-portraits, group pictures of his family or nature pieces such as the "Reader in the Forest".
Gyula Benczúr died in 1920 at the age of 76 in Szécsény. The Hungarian master of history painting experienced for himself Hungary's independence from the Dual Monarchy, with simultaneous degradation to a rump state through the loss of large areas to the new neighbouring states of Romania and Czechoslovakia, and the resulting political struggles for direction in the Republic.
The history of every nation is also reflected in its works of art. This is especially true for a people with such a difficult history as the Magyars. Gyula Benczúr was one of those artists who dedicated himself to taking snapshots of Hungary's past.
Born in 1844 in Nyíregiháza in the far east of the country, he moved with his family at the age of four to Kosice in present-day Slovakia, at that time still part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire as "Upper Hungary". Dual Monarchy. In Kosice he learned to draw from the Austrian history painter Franz Geyling, and from 1861 he studied painting at the Royal Bavarian Academy in Munich, for example with Karl Theodor von Piloty.
In 1870 a national competition for historical paintings was held in Hungary, Benczúr made his debut with the "Baptism of Stefan the Saint" (in original: Vajk megkeresztelése) and won at the first attempt. He returned to Munich, took on commissions from King Ludwig II and was a member of the "revolutionary" artists' association Allotria, whose best-known member today may well have been the caricaturist Wilhelm Busch. Benczúr certainly did not illustrate his "Max and Moritz" and companions, but he did illustrate some works by Friedrich Schiller. Some frescoes in the Munich City Hall and in the Maximilianeum - since 1949 seat of the Bavarian Parliament - are a co-production of Benczúr and Piloty.
Benczúr lived on Lake Starnberg until 1888, before returning to his home country to take up a professorship at the "School of Painting".
Benczúr painted portraits of kings, aristocrats and important contemporaries, but his speciality remained large-format "historical paintings" with plays of light and shadow. These include "The Farewell of Laszlo Hunyadi" (a Hungarian warrior betrayed and beheaded by his own king in 1457), "The Arrest of Francis II Rakoczy" (after the failed uprising of Hungarian nobles against the Habsburg dynasty in 1701) and the "Siege of Buda" (which ended in 1686 with the expulsion of the Ottomans from Hungary's later capital Budapest). In addition to antique (such as the death of Cleopatra or the death of Narcissus) or biblical themes ("Adam and Eve"), he also painted self-portraits, group pictures of his family or nature pieces such as the "Reader in the Forest".
Gyula Benczúr died in 1920 at the age of 76 in Szécsény. The Hungarian master of history painting experienced for himself Hungary's independence from the Dual Monarchy, with simultaneous degradation to a rump state through the loss of large areas to the new neighbouring states of Romania and Czechoslovakia, and the resulting political struggles for direction in the Republic.