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Mukačevo’s Surrounding (Watering Trough) Baron László Mednyánszky

Artist

Baron László Mednyánszky Beckó [Beckov], 1852 – Vienna, 1919

Date 1891
Object type painting
Medium, technique oil, canvas
Dimensions

114 × 201.5 cm

Inventory number 55.849
Collection Collection of Paintings
On view This artwork is not on display

In the early 1890s László Mednyánszky was making landscape sketches and studies around the Verecke Pass for the enormous cyclorama of Árpád Feszty, The Entry of the Hungarians. That was certainly when he got to Munkács where he painted this accurately localised picture. It is a specific feature of Mednyánszky’s paintings that unlike most of his contemporaries, he avoided personal details, close views, the intimate, “interior-like” grouping of the motifs of the scenery. Even in his depiction of the inside of a forest, which allows for greater intimacy, he always left a crack in the composition towards the infinite. Instead of manifesting the late romantic longing for infinity, the openness and vastness of his landscapes convey the need to create optimal harmony between heaven and earth: the mundane and the spiritual components. Although perfectly fitted to the thematic range of late nineteenth-century naturalism, the Watering-Place painted near Munkács is a fine specimen of atmospheric painting of Austrian roots with its subtle light effects, while its mysteriousness built on grey can also be interpreted in the terms of symbolism. | Gábor Bellák

This record is subject to revision due to ongoing research.

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