International studio (35.1908)

Hungarian Art at Earl's Court

each contributor has done what seemed to him to
be right, and, with few exceptions, each one has by
honest independence attained results which can
be frankly admired. Of course it would be absurd
to claim that the majority of the artists represented
are worthy to be counted as masters, but certainly
it can be said that the proportion of able craftsmen
is wholly satisfactory, and that even among the less
accomplished performers there are none who can
be dismissed as entirely unworthy of attention. All
are evidently trying to express what they actually
believe rather than to subordinate a personal aim
to the convention of a school, and all of them
have in greater or less degree done something
which is significant and even memorable.
Decidedly, it is possible to praise very highly the
sea pieces of Oscar Mendlik, who is not only a
shrewd observer of nature but also a confident
executant and a sensitive colourist. His powers
are admirably displayed in such subjects as October
Evening at Ragusa, Breaking Billows, and Evening-
time in Ragusa, which are perhaps the best of the
group of canvases he is showing.
But he proves that he has imagina-
tion as well as accuracy of vision
by exhibiting an impressive tempera
painting, The Avenue to the Nether
World, a picture finely conceived
and very expressively treated.
Another clever artist is Laszlb
Hegediis, whose firmly designed
composition, The Borghese Garden
in Rome, can be much commended
for its decorative largeness of effect,
and whose study of low tones, A
Debrecen Swineherd, is excellent in
its masculine directness and re-
straint ; and Dome Skuteczky, by his
masterly management of tone rela-
tions in his picture, At the Forge,
makes a comparatively unimportant
subject singularly interesting. The
portraits of Philip E. Laszlb are
well enough known and appreciated
in this country, where he has made
a great reputation, so that the excel-
lence of his paintings of Count
Albert Mensdorff and Princess Rad-
ziwill is not likely to be overlooked;
and Geza Vastagh, who also has
been popular here for many years
past, will not fail to please the
admirers of his work by the wonder-
ful vivacity and executive skill with
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which he has realised a farmyard scene, A Group
of Fowls.
Then there must be noted the able study of
contrasts of light, After the Ball, by Sigismund
Vajda ; the successful attempt to represent a mob
of horses in rapid movement, An Eveni?ig Drmk,
by Hugo Loschinger; the well-suggested open-air
effect, The Cook's Stall, by Lajos Ebner-Deak; and
the slightly artificial but decidedly charming
Evening on the Balaton, by Andrew Kacz
Komaromi; and there is distinct merit in A
Tempestuous Mood, by Oscar Glatz. Not the
least interesting section of the show is the room
devoted to works by members of the Szolnok Art
Colony, a group of artists who have settled down
together in a Hungarian village. This group has
no common creed and professes no belief in
special tenets ; the members of it work each in his
own way, and consequently their association has
not produced any general mannerism shared by
them all. Indeed, the works they show are
unusually varied both in character and material.


PORTRAIT OF PRINCESS RADZIWILL

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BY PHILIP E. LASZL6