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Dimensions: 119 by 91.5cm., 47 by 36in.
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Provenance: PROPERTY FROM A GERMAN COLLECTION
Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris (commissioned directly from the artist)
Acquired by the family of the present owner circa 1920; thence by descent
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Literature: Lajos Végvári, Mihály Munkácsy, Budapest, 1959, p. 62, no. 504, pl. CLXXVIII
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Notes: Painted circa 1885.
By the Stream was painted at the height of Munkácsy's success as a painter of the beau monde in Paris, where he had settled in 1871. It depicts two elegant young women, in the latest Paris fashions, resting by a stream while promenading in what could well be the Bois de Boulogne, a favoured rural retreat among the urban leisured classes.
The picture exemplifies Munkácsy's work from this period, which in terms of its elegant staffage is in marked contrast to his earlier history paintings and scenes from peasant life. This change in direction was in direct response to the tastes of his new well-to-do Parisian patrons, and became even more marked after Munkácsy entered into a ten-year contract with the upmarket Galerie Sedelmeyer in 1878 (fig.1).
While clearly swayed by market forces, making him a wealthy man, Munkácsy always remained true to the plein air aesthetic he loved and had adopted in the early 1870s while working in Barbizon. By the Stream is a case in point, the majestic light-dappled backdrop akin to the forest interiors of László Paál or Gustave Courbet.
