Szolnok Colony
Hungarian painters’ colony at Szolnok, c. 100 km south-east of Budapest. It began with regular visits to Szolnok by the Austrian painter August von Pettenkofen for over 30 years from 1851, to paint lowland landscapes, the market and gypsies. He was followed by a number of Austrian, German and Hungarian painters, mostly from the Parisian circle of Mihály Munkácsy, such as Gyula Aggházy (1850–1919) and LAJOS DEÁK-ÉBNER. Szolnok was frequented primarily by plein-air and genre
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Szolnok Colony
Hungarian painters’ colony at Szolnok, c. 100 km south-east of Budapest. It began with regular visits to Szolnok by the Austrian painter August von Pettenkofen for over 30 years from 1851, to paint lowland landscapes, the market and gypsies. He was followed by a number of Austrian, German and Hungarian painters, mostly from the Parisian circle of Mihály Munkácsy, such as Gyula Aggházy (1850–1919) and LAJOS DEÁK-ÉBNER. Szolnok was frequented primarily by plein-air and genre painters. From 1875 to 1887 Deák-Ébner worked between Szolnok and Paris, painting some landscapes but mostly village genre scenes. From the mid-1870s there developed at Szolnok a new socially conscious, Realist style of genre painting, significant examples of which are Lajos Deák-Ébner’s Men Towing a Barge (c. 1885; Budapest, N.G.) and the work of ADOLF FÉNYES, and this heralded a new era in the colony. Capitalizing on such promising beginnings, the Szolnok Art Association was founded in 1901, and artists’ studios were built by the following year. The official application for establishing an artists’ colony was signed by János Vaszary (1867–1939), Károly Kernstok and László Mednyánszky, among others. The colony’s houses were given to artists already working there, such as Fényes and Sándor Bihari (1855–1906), and to newcomers. The Szolnok artists, like their counterparts in the NAGYBÁNYA COLONY, painted en plein air, especially in the early 1900s, and were interested in subjects offered by the lowlands environment and its people. From the 1910s their work became more decorative.
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