landscapes, brilliantly exemplified in the "Sunset" and the forest interior called "In the Woods," wherein the fundamental vigor of his race is expressed with the power of enduring art. In their sheer technical virtuosity in the rendering of form and color these landscapes of Munkácsy brilliantly epitomize all those purely painter-like qualities in which Hungarian art particularly excels. His pupil and fellow-townsmen, Bertalan Karlovsky, gives an admirable illustration of these qualities of sound, fluent craftsmanship in his portraits of "Countess Károlyi” and "Count Gyula Andrássy."

Like the French, from whom they have learned much, Hungarian painters are to the manner born. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the landscapes, genre pieces, and figure-paintings by Lajos Bruck, who was one of the first exponents of the French Impressionist movement in Hungary. In its light, suggestive, tersely expressed impressionism the "Seaside in Bretagne" recalls Boudin, while the "Girl Playing with Butterflies" approaches Manet in its fresh color and fluent, highly summarized characterization. In the "Summer Landscape" by Géza Mészöly we witness the influence of Corot on Hungarian landscape-painting, while the three paintings by Baron Mednyánszky, illustrating three successive stages of his development, show how this influence served as a basis for the plein-air movement which brought Hungarian art in upon. that road whereon it has found a free outlet for its manifold activities. All that is most vital and interesting in present-day Hungarian art is directly or indirectly. traceable to the activities set in motion at Nagybánya, a beautifully situated little town in eastern Hungary. Here, under the inspiring leadership of Simon Hollósy, a group of the most progressive artists were united by kindred aims. They reaffirmed the gospel of light and air triumphantly enunciated by Monet and Manet; they introduced into Hungarian art a fresh and vigorous note of realism that liberated personal and racial traits of character. "Nagybánya became the Hun

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garian Barbison in the sense that here art returned to nature and was purified." With this return to nature came a revival of interest in their long-neglected peasant art, and thenceforth naturalism developed hand in hand with a marked tendency toward decoration that found its inspiration in the oldest traditions of the race. many and diverse wanderings Hungarian art came back to its own and was rejuvenated. The finest fruits of this recreating movement is found here in the work of such men as Károly Ferenczy, Béla Iványi-Grünwald, István Csók, József Rippl-Rónai, Adolf Fényes, Nándor Katona, Baron Ferencz Hatvany, the early work of Ödön Márffy, and the later work of both János Vaszary and Baron Mednyánszky, all of which is deeply rooted in the native soil, though admittedly brought to fruition under the generating influence of that luminary, French Impressionism.

The evolution from romanticism to realism graphically depicted in the career. of Baron Mednyánszky manifests itself somewhat similarly in Károly Ferenczy, whose "Girl's Portrait," painted in the early nineties, is kin to Matthys Maris and Whistler, while the beautiful little "Still Life: Roses," from the Nemes collection, is plainly in the direction of that naturalism tersely expressed in the recently finished autumnal "Landscape," wherein he has achieved a high degree of synthetic abstraction in the rendering of the fundamental structure of nature's forms. This evolution is repeated again in the five canvases of János Vaszary, wherein one may trace his development from the closely studied, delicately rendered academic nude in the "Woman with Mirror," from the Nemes collection, through the successive steps marked by the "Peasant Girl's Head," increasingly truthful in the larger sense, to the semidecorative rendering of reality in the "Promenade on Lake Balaton," followed the next year by the suggestive impressionism of the vividly characterized "Portrait of Countess Lajos Batthyányi," and at last finding its culmination in the purely stylistic treatment accorded the "Woman

with a Cat," wherein he frankly affiliates himself with those strongly marked tendencies toward decoration that have their source in Hungarian peasant art.

This pronounced tendency toward decoration evinced by Hungarian artists, no less than by contemporary artists the world over, is not without its deeper significance. It marks an important change in the attitude of the modern artist toward the easel picture. He is becoming increasingly aware of its comparative uselessness, nay, its utter impropriety in the modern home; and he is endeavoring to make it conform to some decorative purpose, and in so doing he is returning to the principles of mural painting. This change is very apparent in the development of the art of Rippl-Rónai, which has evolved from a frankly realistic rendering of the life about him to a purely

decorative treatment of the same subjects. The portrait of the eminent sculptor, Márk Vedres, is almost pure decoration. The emphasis in this recently painted portrait is exclusively on the decorative aspect of the subject, and the result is a vivid, resonantly colorful, strongly wrought design in which the objective element of portraiture remains a secondary consideration. This treatment is partly anticipated in the low, flat tonalities of his earlier "Child's Portrait," painted in 1904, wherein realism has been subordinated to a decorative ensemble that reaches its culmination in the purely decorative pattern. entitled "Ladies in the Garden," wherein natural forms have been reduced to their decorative coefficients. One needs only compare these later products of his versatile, productive genius with his earlier "Portrait of Dr. Guttmann" to realize

how far he has gone in the direction of pure decoration and upon what a solid foundation of realism this is based. Presented with such fundamental simplicity as to produce a powerful impression of actuality, the emphasis in this early portrait is as exclusively on the reality of the subject as it is on the purely decorative aspect in the stylistic portrait of Márk Vedres. Between these two extremes his art oscillates, expressing itself with everincreasing individuality and power, in which the racial qualities become ever more predominant. The note of nationalism is enforced with a robust, rhapsodic accent that is essentially Hungarian. After many years' sojourn in Paris he responded to that call of the blood which drew Gauguin to Tahiti, Zorn to Dalecarlia, and Rippl-Rónai to the vine-clad hills of his birthplace, Kaposvár, where the influences liberated at Nagybánya are achieving their most national and individual expression.

In diverse ways this note of nationalism expresses itself in the very personal still-life pieces and impressionistically treated figure paintings of that fluent and vivacious colorist, István Csók, no less than in the rigorous veracity of Adolf Fényes' Hungarian "Kitchen Table," which has the tart flavor of peasant matter-of-factness in the rendering of the various kitchen utensils that compose this extraordinary still life, as well as in such typical Hungarian landscapes as the mountain brook "In the Tátra" by Nándor Katona, who is a product of those same influences that later were instrumental in directing the highly accomplished art of Baron Ferencz Hatvany into the invigorating channels of Impressionism, ably expressed in his "Sunny Street" and the "Environs of Rome." The gifted young painter Count Gyula Batthyányi also avows his allegiance to this movement in his spirited and well-conceived "Longchamps" while asserting a predilection for decorative effects that achieves a Beardsley-like expression in the "Ladies of the Harem," who betray their relationship to the odalisques of Charles

Conder. The "Hungarian Landscape" and "Shepherdess" by Oszkár Glatz; the "Tired Horse" by Móric Góth; the herdsman, Mihály Czigány, by Lajos Kunffy; the "Woman Arranging Her Hair" by Dezsö Czigány; the "Landscape with Figures" by Zórád, and the women. "In the Garden" by Sándor Ziffer, are all products of the influences set in motion at Nagybánya by Hollósy. To him Lajos Márk also owes something of that revivifying light and color that illumine his charming, decorative portraits, strikingly exemplified in his sunlit figure of a "Lady with Parasol."

But the real precursor of this movement, which has borne good fruits in Hungarian art, was Pál de Szinnyei-Merse. Long before Hollósy gathered about him that group of young radicals who were destined to play a decisive part in the making of modern Hungarian art, SzinnyeiMerse had anticipated their naturalistic researches. As early as 1872 he introduced to the amazed and baffled public of Budapest the first Hungarian plein-air picture, the "Majális,” picture, the "Majális," or out-of-door breakfast, which created a discussion as intensely derogatory as did the appearance of Manet's "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe." His clear-sighted, independent vision, which had discovered for itself the truths observed by Monet, was damned as utterly wrong, and he ceased painting and retired to his country estate. After ten years he had the satisfaction of seeing his point of view confirmed by the course of events, which had at last caught up with him, and he emerged from his self-imposed retirement and resumed his activities with increased power, as is evident in the certainty and vigor of that clearly expressed bit of realism, the "Melting Snow," painted in the nineties. painted in the nineties. Born in 1845. this revolutionary of the seventies has lived to see his ideas prevail, and even somewhat superseded by the younger generation who, none the less, continue to regard him as the Nestor of modern art in Hungary.

Károly Kernstock is perhaps the most notable figure among those who are lead

ing contemporary Hungarian art into new paths. Profoundly related to Cézanne, as is evident in his monumental "Nude" and the rhythmically moving "Horsemen," Kernstock has recalled his colleagues to a consideration of what is fundamental and architectonic in form as opposed to that atmospheric disintegration precipitated by Impressionism. That discerning Hungarian critic, Dr. Bölöni, says of his pictures that they "have a homogeneous construction wherein every line is preconceived and calculated, wherein 'Man' appears with the whole weight of his body within a fixed plan as the highest and worthiest mass that painting can reproduce," while Dr. Feleky speaks of them as having a "dynamic countenance," which clearly expresses the force and character of this new and disturbing element in Hungarian art that has attracted to it a little group of young radicals who commanded the attention of the public in 1911 by exhibiting together as "The

Eight." Of those who have responded to the influences set in motion by the art of Cézanne few have given a more personal expression to their feeling for form than has Béla Iványi-Grünwald in his large, strongly designed landscape with figures entitled "Nascence," in which he closely approaches Cézanne's sense of the weight and volume of the universe.

As different in their individual physiognomy as any eight men that ever trod the same path, they express collectively "everything that is turbulent and aspiring in the art of recent years." In the art of Márffy these tendencies are reflected in the early Manet-like "Man's Portrait," in the later Cézanne-like "Still Life" and finally in the closely designed "Wood Path," where we witness the influence of Gauguin upon his art. In the two "Self Portraits" and the "Landscape" by Lajos Tihanyi we feel a high degree of intensely characterized objectivity based upon a profound understanding of Greco, while Róbert Be