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Dimensions: 71 by 80.5cm., 28 by 31 3/4 in.

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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM A BRITISH PRIVATE COLLECTION

Acquired from the artist by the father of the present owner; thence by descent

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Notes: From being an adherent of Activism, Istvan Szönyi set himself the task of reviving the teachings of the Nagybánya School. His art was fundamentally realistic, achieving an individual fusion of Realism with an Impressionist treatment of light.

Szönyi very rapidly rose to become one of the leading Hungarian painters of his day, with a large following of younger artists. This was not only due to his talent as an artist and his personal charm, but because he had promoted himself as the embodiment of the contemplative attitude in which many artists sought refuge after the upheavals of the revolution. His work displays the first development, in the contemporary spirit, of the painting of sunshine and of the plein-air style.

In 1923 Szönyi moved to the village of Zebegény on the Danube Bend. In the surrounding countryside he found a source of inspiration which led him towards an aesthetic reflecting his own artistic personality: a mellow and lyrical style in which he could convey the pictoral beauty of the world around him.

The present work displays the typically light palette of this period, in which loosened forms produce an effect of vibration in the atmosphere, and the softly blurred colours suggest lyrical emotions. Zebegény was Szönyi's paradise and refuge, a virgin land in which people could live together in simplicity and harmony. He deliberately rejected any intellectual and analytical approach to his work, relying on his eye only: to discover the beauty of a chosen subject he depended on his own innate humanism, and in selecting the different values of light he was guided by his own sensitivity.