Great Plains Painting
Term applied to Hungarian late 19th- and 20th-century painting associated with the Great Plains, a large expanse of land in the Carpathian Basin, mainly in Hungary. The sparsely populated area contains numerous small farming communities loosely scattered around urban centres. Up to the end of World War II these communities probably represented the poorest stratum of Hungarian society; the unfavourable climate with its frequent droughts made their life especially difficult. The landscape and ethnic population
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Great Plains Painting
Term applied to Hungarian late 19th- and 20th-century painting associated with the Great Plains, a large expanse of land in the Carpathian Basin, mainly in Hungary. The sparsely populated area contains numerous small farming communities loosely scattered around urban centres. Up to the end of World War II these communities probably represented the poorest stratum of Hungarian society; the unfavourable climate with its frequent droughts made their life especially difficult. The landscape and ethnic population of the area appeared occasionally in the work of certain Hungarian painters in the 19th century, but it was not until the Austrian painter August von Pettenkofen regularly visited the area that the depiction of the landscape and life style of the Great Plains became more widespread. From 1851 he returned annually to paint near Szolnok, bringing with him other Austrian, German and Hungarian painters from Paris (see SZOLNOK COLONY). The depiction of the Great Plains gradually became a romanticized image representing Hungary as a whole.
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