We all do it. Was it really so long ago that I did……? I thought my trip to Budapest was last year….no, it’s two years ago....
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BUDAPEST - A PILGRIMAGE
Re-reading the chapter this evening I did have a chuckle over the different experiences but perhaps not the bad weather and the unforeseen landing. As it happens there is a collection here in Paris which is called « Budapest Masterpieces » at the Musee de Luxembourg. I knew by the list of artists that they were exhibiting that it was not really my cup of tea, but there had been a few paintings in the Beaux Arts museum that I had really been impressed with. I would go back to see more. As with « Caramborolages », the exhibition had only been on for a week. 680 visitors so far and not even a 100 when l went in. The best way to see anything.
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| XVC - Bohemia |
In the first section, « The End of the Middle Ages » I was pleased to see a Saint Marguerite with a rather woeful story…….I must say that her foot on the dragon does not look as if she is doing him in any harm.
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| Hungary - XVC - Sainte Dorothy | - another matyre |
There was something about this sculpture that was very touching and even sensual .
This particular Cranach has always appealed to me. 16th century. Salome in my eyes is there to seduce. Having just appealed to Herod for the head of John the Baptiste, she really seems to have come from a sumptuous feast rather than a beheading. Perhaps you would not describe her as erotic but she is certainly ambiguous and perhaps that is they way Lucas Cranach painted his woman.
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| "Salome with St John the Baptste's head": Lucas Cranac between 1526-1530 |
Greco (1541-1615) has always surprised me by the parlor of his portraits or figures in his paintings. The « Annonciation » and « Marie-Madeleine » reinforce these feelings. His women seem to be saying « are you talking to me?….. » they look so pure and even with a nipple showing there is nothing that makes me feel that there is a sign of sensuality in the painting.
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| "Annonciation" around 1600 |
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| "A Penitent Marie Madeliene" - around 1576 |
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| Greco - "Saint Jacques Le Mineur" between 1585-1590 |
Then of course there is Artemisia Gentelischi (1593-1564). I can remember conferences on this woman painter….her father….how she had been raped….married so she could go on painting…..that’s a very brief outline of her remarkable life. Her work has so much force, so full of energy that yes, I have gone to see specific exhibitions of her period. Johan Liss (17th C.) and painted the same subject seems to have a similar approach.
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| Johann Liss - "Judith in Holopherne's tent" |
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| Gentileschi "Yaël and Sisera" - 1620 |
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| This statue is very outspoken..... |
The Dutch or the Golden Age, a break away from the religious themes of their latin brothers. In Holland with a protestant majority, religious art lost the position it had occupied in the churches. The work now seems rather like « snap-shots » of people who lived in an « embarrassment of riches » moving from unbridled pleasures to intimacy and meditation.
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| Frans Hals (1582-1666) "Man's Portrait" 1634 |
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| Jan Steen (1626-1679) "The Family of Cats" 1673-75 |
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| Detail of the cats |
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| Pieter de Hoch "A woman reading a letter in front of an open window" 1664 |
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| An old man of 93 |
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| Peter-Paul Rubens (1577-1640) Study |
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| "Young peasant with a distaff - 1740 |
This Giacomo Curiti (1698-1767) is anything but a young and melancholic peasant for me. She has that come on look and eyes which are beckoning you on. I had never seen this painting before nor did I know the painter but it will be one that I remember.
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) too is an artist l don’t mind taking time to look at. I had seen one of these paintings before but not the two together and of course that is the way they should be shown.
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| "The water carrier" between 1808-1812 |
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| "The Knife Grinder" between 1808-1812 |
There are portraits but also studies of heads that seem to impart an extra degree of truth about the figure.
Or just simple outside scenes
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| Jozef Rippl-Ronai (1862-1927) Woman with a cage - 1892 |
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| Mihaly Munkacsy (1844-1900) "Study of an apprentice yawning" |
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| Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) "Maternal Precaution", 1855-1857 |
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| Rembrandt - (1606-1669) "Dutch Peasant house in an obscure light" 1635-36 |
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| Mihaly Munkacsy "Man with a cape" 1874 |
It’s a little later but Manet’s « Baudelaire’s Mistress » is striking indeed. Look at that leg which sticks out. This is all I could see. She was a disabled person when the painting was done but that crinoline certainly has a very prominent place.
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| Efouard Manet (1832-1883) La Maitresse de Baudeliar or The Woman with a fan - 1862 |
A few of our French artists creep into the collection. They are interesting because unexpected.
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| Claude Monet (1840-1926) "The Harbour at Trouville - Low Tide" |
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| Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) "Woman knitting....1"885 |
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| Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) "Provincial Lanscape " 1895-1900 |
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| Georges Seurat (1859-1891) "Man Sitting on a Bench...." 1882-83 |
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| Claude Monet (1840-1926) "Three Fishing Boats" 1885 |
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A few surealists......
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| Egon Schiele (1890-1918) "Woman sitting" 1911 |
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| Janos Vaszary (1867-1939) "L'Age d'Or" an emblematique masterpeice of the Hungarian Secession |
Just as these two paintings « Adam and Eve » which were a rather modern De Chirico. These are by a Hungarian artist, Sandor Bortnyik (1893-1976). An activist, expelled from his country when the fleeting communist government was in power and in Germany he worked along side the progressive and Bauhaus artists which probably explains these paintings.
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| "Le Nouvel Adam" - 1924 |
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| "La Nouvelle Eve " -1924 |
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| Béni Ferenczy (1890-1967) "Young Man" 1919 |
Standing right next to Adam and Eve ....
The painting l had seen In Budapest and which had really struck me was by Oskar Kokoschka. An Austrian Hungarian (1886-1980) whose work l have followed for years. But his « Véronique et le Voile de la Sainte Face » was a Klimt influence. I learnt that Kokoschka had been a student of Klimt. I am not really a Klimt follower but would have gambled quite a sum on this painting saying it was painted by Klimt.
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| 1909 |
Nothing really has made me any closer to these artists but it was a very pleasant hour or so and l enjoyed what I saw and photographed.
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