“Seven Things About…” Ladislav Mednyánszky and His Diaries
Prepared by Katarína Beňová, curator of the Old Art Collections
At one time or another many of us have kept a diary, recording events from our lives or interesting travel experiences. For others, keeping a diary is a form of therapy, in which they do battle with their demons and their anxieties. A diary is an excellent instrument for reflection on one’s inner state. It was so for the painter Ladislav Mednyánszky (1852–1919), who kept a diary written in Hungarian or German, but somewhat “concealed” by his use of the Greek alphabet, for almost the whole of his life. In 2019 the Slovak National Gallery commemorated the centenary of his death, publishing a second and expanded Slovak edition of Mednyánzsky’s diary entries and a selection of his correspondence. The very intimate and isolated fate of the writer, who often moved on the margins of society, was revealed to readers. He was welcomed in the intellectual salons, whether in Vienna or Budapest or “at home” in Beckov or Strážky. At the same time, he also felt in his element on society’s outer reaches, among tramps and vagabonds. These two worlds of his were joined together by frequent travelling; many times he felt a direct and even an imperative need to change his working location.
Mednyánszky’s diaries are not solely relevant to lovers and connoisseurs of his art: they are also worthwhile reading for a broader public with an interest in the complex period at the turn of the 20th century. His fate is connected with the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the intricate political situation culminating in World War I, in which Mednyánzsky himself enlisted. The year of his death,1919, is a kind of imaginary milestone marking the end not only of the artist’s life but also of the original political and geographical span of the Central European space. Despite the rich content and epic sweep of Mednyánszky’s published diaries, this may still be only a torso of what has been preserved of his life and work. The present 7 Things About… are concerned with circumstances associated with Mednyánszky as a person. The reader has an opportunity to look more closely at features of his personality and important figures in his life, while at the same time viewing specimens from the developing process of his art.
1/ The Market in Szolnok
“Today is Christmas Eve. In the morning I went to the ice. A nineteen. I painted a watercolour (The Market in Szolnok), which I dedicated to my mother. I painted it at my sister’s place, she was sewing something. We were talking… Based on the watercolour done for my mother, I want to make a painting of the square in Szolnok and the fair there (a motif would be found).” [1] (December 24, 1877), Monday, Christmas, (Strážky)
In 1877 Mednyánszky for the first time visited the town of Szolnok, situated on the river Tisza. Thanks to the interest of the Austrian painter August von Pettenkofen (1822–1889), this picturesque little town became a popular haunt for painters from Austria and Hungary. Some came there just once or twice, but for others Szolnok was a plein air studio all year round, and principally in summer. Their essential themes were the lowland country by the river Tizsa, genre-landscape subjects inspired by the life of the town, its specific atmosphere during markets, and the ethnographically interesting local communities, which were very attractive visually. Mednyánszky stayed in Szolnok in 1877 and on separate occasions in 1880. Apart from his personal contacts, for example with the Austrian painter Tina Blau, here he had the opportunity to develop his first large-scale landscape ideas, adapting his personal experience of his stay in Barbizon. He sketched motifs of the river and the fishermen in Szolnok; similarly he was attracted by the motif of the market, with the column to the Holy Trinity. In Mednyánszky’s watercolour also one can see the bustling life in the marketplace, where horses, cattle and vegetables were sold, with vigorous debates and haggling. In the relatively homogeneous coloured mass of people we can imagine diverse and even exotic types (peasants, traders, gypsies), creating a specific microorganism in Holy Trinity Square in Szolnok.
[1] Ladislav Mednyánszky Denníky 1877–1918. Výber z umelcových zachovaných denníkov a listov (Diaries 1877–1918. A Selection from the Artist’s Extant Diaries and Letters) , SNG Bratislava 2019, pp. 50–51.
2/ Chess Game
“After my evening meal I read awhile and I played chess.” [1] (February — March 1878, Strážky)
“From there he went home and I went to Caffé Greco, where I played a game of chess.” [2] (March 1880, Rome)
“Knézics Street №10, at the moment he works in the gasworks. From there I went to the chess cafe, where again I hung on for a fairly long time… Where chess is concerned, I have noticed in myself a certain exaggerated mutability, or rather an imbalance; it’s a pathological phenomenon (connected with the nerves) and a partial loss of self-control; maybe it’s just weariness, one ought not to play too long; that is the sore spot in this affair.” [3] (January 1894, Budapest)
Mednyánszky was a passionate chess player, which is evidenced by a number of drawings of chess games found in his sketchbooks and notebooks. The Hungarian painter István Csók (1865–1961) recalls that he and Mednyánszky used to play chess regularly in Budapest. Another frequent playing partner of his was the painter Károly Lotz (1833–1904). In his diaries Mednyánszky recorded the places where he played chess, whether at home (in the Virágbokor guesthouse, Hotel Prince István, or Hotel Bristol in Budapest), or during his travels. The intellectual community used to meet for chess, and this type of game fully suited Mednyánzsky’s conflicted personality, where a peaceful tempo alternated with high drama: he himself remarked that it had an influence on his state of mind.
[1] Ladislav Mednyánszky Denníky 1877–1918. Výber z umelcových zachovaných denníkov a listov, SNG Bratislava 2019, p. 66.
[2] Ladislav Mednyánszky Denníky 1877–1918. Výber z umelcových zachovaných denníkov a listov, SNG Bratislava 2019, p. 75.
[3] Ladislav Mednyánszky Denníky 1877–1918. Výber z umelcových zachovaných denníkov a listov, SNG Bratislava 2019, pp. 111–112.
3/ The Old Dog
“Write soon and in detail about your daily doings. What would I not give to spend a few days with you? But alas, that’s not possible as yet! Embracing you, the Old Dog.” [1] (Mednyánszky’s letter to his sister Miri, Vienna November 13, 1917)
Around him Mednyánszky had a very narrow and important group of people with whom he conducted intellectual dialogues, discussing politics and questions of art. They included his brother-in-law Štefan Czóbel, husband of Mednyánszky’s sister Miri, and his sister the poet Minka Czóbelová, who became very close to the artist and had an excellent relationship with him. We can add the art critic and publicist Gyula Pekár, whom Mednyánszky nicknamed “Hippi” or “Hippo”, or the Newfoundland; Dezső Malonyay, nicknamed “Buli” or “Bulldog”, an art critic and intimate friend of the painter, and author of the first monograph about him; and the painter Ferdinand Katona, nicknamed “Akibom”. This grouping was extremely friendly and gave Mednyánzsky a very important feeling of stability and background. The close circle also included the writer Zsigmund Justh, whose portrait Mednyánszky painted a number of times. In one of Justh’s letters also he refers to the “old dog”, i.e. Mednyánszky, who was to have a leading part in his novel as a kind of watchful guardian. Whe the novel Fuimus appeared in 1906, the main character Lipót Czobor alias Poldi (created from Mednyánszkeho) refers to himself as “the old dog”.
[1] Ladislav Mednyánszky Denníky 1877–1918. Výber z umelcových zachovaných denníkov a listov, SNG Bratislava 2019, p. 596.
4/ Studio in Strážky
“In the morning I tidied up, after breakfast I went for a walk, and after that I went to the studio, where I resolved to make great changes. The reason for my failures is a tendency to do everything in big formats, bigger than is required.” [1] (December 24, 1877), Monday, Christmas (Strážky)
“Today I woke up late and not in the best humour. On my way to the studio, however, my mood lightened. So much so that I put heart and soul into the motif of a brook. By evening it was entirely painted.” [2] (January 1878), Monday (Strážky)
Mednyánszky’s first studio was in one of the big rooms of the castle in Strážky. Later his father, Baron Eduard Mednyánszky, decided to have a brick studio built beside the castle, close to the outhouses — a “Swiss cottage”. It had to be at some little distance from the house, so that the painter would not feel constricted. According to the memoirs of the artist’s sister Miri Czóbelová, the building was supposed to begin in 1878, hence shortly after the painter returned from his first stay in France and also after he had definitively ended his academic studies of art in Munich and Paris. Work on building the studio probably continued for a relatively long time, and in 1888 Baron Mednyánszky wrote in a letter that he was highly pleased with the construction. After the artist’s death, the family piously preserved the paintings, drawings and preparatory works that Mednyánszky had left behind there. The artist’s niece, Baroness Margita Czóbelová, took care of the building of the studio, which was gradually dismantled after World War II, however, for building material. During the interwar period she captured it in one of her works.
5/ Blažej Ladecky / Tragedy
“Above all, looking back at the years that have passed, you are the one who comes to my mind, my dear, unfortunate friend Blazsej Ladecky (Ladeczky); I have lost you forever… Late in the afternoon your soul departed. It was Sunday the 12th of June, an unpleasant, cold, rainy day, and I still had no foreboding. Already then you were stretched out lifeless, lying in one of the bigger rooms with your grieving relatives around you. Monday morning too was cold, inclement, dark grey; I went out to work, taking our little dog with me.” [1] (December 31, 1881, Beckov)
From childhood Mednyánszky had his trusted friends, who kept him company around Strážky and Beckov, where he grew up and spent his youth. One of them was Blazsej Ladeczky, a shepherd’s helper from Potvorice, where he died at a young age in 1881, mourned very much by the painter. Similarly, others who were close to him died young: the coachman Ján Dinda in Strážky or Bálint Kurdi, a boatman from Vác and Mednyánszky’s great love. Ladeczky’s death affected the painter deeply, and it probably furnished the theme of one of his first large-format figural compositions. Over the Grave and Tragedy are two works which reflectively capture grief, the great pain of the survivors whose child has died. Mednyánszky did not present these works in public, and for most of the time they were kept in his studio. They were produced at the turn of the 1880s, when the artist was still at the beginning of his career. In landscape painting he was achieving his first successes, but the figural work remained long concealed from viewers. He was still unsure of his execution, as indicated by frequent over-paintings and also the large-format drawings he produced as preparatory works on these themes.
[1] Ladislav Mednyánszky Denníky 1877–1918. Výber z umelcových zachovaných denníkov a listov, SNG Bratislava 2019, p. 86.
6/ Ferdinand Katona and Mednyánszky
“Today I planned to go to Pressburg and thence to Vienna (on the matter of the studio) on account of (Kleinberger) and (Traugott).“ [1] (December 31, 1880 (Beckov)
“A rule is a higher morality. There was one little matter which contributed to renouncing “those of yesterday”. What Buli and I talked about, regarding Akibom.” [2] (January 1, 1901, Budapest)
An impoverished Jewish youth originally known as Nathan Kleinberger, who became the painter Ferdinand (Nándor) Katona (1864–1932), was taken under his wing by Mednyánszky. He met him as a 15-year-old, probably in Kežmarok, and taught him painting. Recognising his talent, he arranged for him to study art, and for example supported him on a trip to Paris, financed the beginning of his artistic career, and helped him with the renting of a studio in Vienna. During his stay in Strážky, where the artist’s sister Miri took care of him, he created portraits of her daughters Marianna and Margita. His relationship with Mednyánszky was highly conflicted, since Katona imitated his teacher too much, and at the same time Mednyánszky was probably a demanding mentor. In a later period of Katona’s work he manifested a paranoid obsession, which became familiar to the art milieu in Budapest. He had a pathologically fixed idea that Mednyánszky “was copying” his works and that the whole world was combining against him, needless to say by Mednyánszky’s incitement. Katona could not master his own feeling of inferiority, which in his developing mental illness probably influenced him to the point where he made a number of copies of his works, so that something at least would remain to him.
7/ Watering Place with Ravens
“Until noon I painted with Traugott. Afterwards, when lunch was finished, I went to the studio, where I sketched one small picture. A little well in the fields with a trough, two ravens on it. The essential mood is of early Spring, everywhere one can see snow melting. By the well, and in front of it, there are puddles of water.” [1] (February — March 1878, Strážky)
Mednyánszky’s work is richly represented in Slovak and Hungarian collections. A specific feature of his landscape and figural art is the fact that he rarely identified his works, with his brother-in-law Štefan Czóbel and his secretary József Pálmai sometimes supplying signatures. To suggest a chronological arrangement of Mednyánszky’s work is a very complicated matter, because once he had found his own “voice”, he would address a theme in a similar manner whether in the 1880s or after 1900. This is where Mednyánszky’s surviving diaries offer assistance, more precisely defining some of the themes that the artist worked on.
Watering Place with Ravens is one of those examples. The painting was produced by Mednyánszky in Strážky; he left it in his permanent studio which his father, Baron Eduard Mednyánszky, had had built near the castle’s outhouses. Here he collected paintings which he was working on during his home stays, and also those which he had left unfinished, with only the essentials completed. In his diary for 1878 he entered some information about the theme of ravens (or crows) at a watering hole, presented in an atmosphere of Spring. It was thus possible to date more precisely the series of sketches and the subsequent oil painting, which is in the Slovak National Gallery. When painting this typical segment of landscape, capturing an impression, Mednyánszky was influenced by his experience of the plein air Barbizon school; he had painted in Barbizon itself in 1875, during his first stay in France.
[1] Ladislav Mednyánszky Denníky 1877–1918. Výber z umelcových zachovaných denníkov a listov, SNG Bratislava 2019, pp. 68–69.
Ladislav Mednyánszky. Denníky 1877–1918
Ladislav Mednyánszky. Denníky 1877–1918. Výber z umelcových zachovaných denníkov a listov. You may order this work at e-shope sng.sk, or buy it directly in selected bookshops.
