János Vaszary

Acquired from the artist by the parents of the present owner

Original canvas. There are no signs of retouching visible under ultraviolet light, and apart from a spot of paint loss to the lower right corner, as well as minor artist's pinholes running along the left edge of the painting, this work is in very good original condition. Held in a simple, gold-painted moulded plaster and wood frame.
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The present work was most probably painted in 1905, during Vaszary's study trip to Spain.

Vaszary was an excellent colourist and his imaginative art, sensitive to modern trends, merits him an important place in the history of twentieth century Hungarian painting. A pupil of Bertalan Szekely at the Budapest School of Decorative Arts, Vaszary moved on to study in Munich and Paris at the Académie Julian. His style often changed but was always at the forefront of modernism.

Vaszary was a founding member of the Szolnok Artists Colony on the edge of the Great Plain in 1902. In Nagaybanya he shifted to a new stress on figurative painting rather than landscape. During the course of his artistic career he explored a wide range of avant-garde artistic styles, including Art Nouveau, Realism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism and Post-Impressionism.

It was in Paris as a member of the Group of Eight, and inspired by the Ecole de Paris and notably Dufy, Matisse, Derain and van Dongen that Vaszary developed his decorative style. Representing scenes from fashionable seaside resorts and of metropolitain life, from the early 1900s, Vaszary's work became increasingly characterised by rapid, loose brushstrokes achieving a harmonious balance between figurative and plein air painting, as evident in the present work.