Studio: international art (32.1904)

Until quite recently one Hungarian alone had
the courage to resist the overwhelming demands of
convention, and to seek his inspiration—where alone
a true artist can find it—in the study of Nature
herself, who never fails in the end fully to reward
her votaries. That Hungarian was Baron Laszld
Mednyanszky, who simply revels in the beauties of
natural scenery; and, he having opened the way,
the whole body of Hungarian artists are now eagerly
following in his steps. Indeed, he still remains
the leader, the pioneer in Hungary of modern art,
the apostle of the new aesthetic culture.

Not only in his art does he stand alone, far in
advance of his contemporaries, but as a man his
personality is unique, and he is looked up to as a
prophet. The scion of a noble aristocratic
family of long descent, he left the brilliant
circle to which he belonged in his early
youth to devote himself entirely to art, and he
has never yet faltered in his faithfulness
to his choice. Though his hair is dashed with
grey, his heart is still young, and he is as ready as
ever to grasp the pilgrim's staff and sally forth in
travel-worn garments to achieve fresh triumphs
with his brush. He is credited with giving all his
good clothes to the poor, considering anything fit

for tramping about in search ot subjects in the
fields and forests, hills and plains, of remote dis-
tricts. Sleeping in some humble charcoal-burner's
hut and living on fruit and vegetables, he contem-
plates with ever fresh enthusiasm the colour sym-
phonies of Nature, which to him seem little short of
divine. Giving absolutely no thought to himself,
to what he wears or what he eats and drinks,
indifferent to the praise or blame of others—he
devotes himself utterly to his art; in other words,
to the faithful interpretation of Nature as she reveals
herself to him. No one is more truly in touch with
her in every mood than he, for he has the soul of a
poet as well as the eye and hand of an artist. He
lives as befits the prophet-painter his fellow-country-
men consider him to be. The only furniture of
his studio is a simple bedstead, for when he is at
home he lives like an ascetic on the pittance of a
day-labourer. He has four or five studios in dif-
ferent towns—Budapest, Vienna, and Paris—but
he seems to rent them only for the sake of having
a refuge to lend to friends poorer than himself.
Pretending that they are his models, he makes an
allowance to many an unfortunate man or woman
out of work, when he is away on a painting excur-
sion, climbing some mountain or tramping across
a plain, bare of the very necessaries of life. In

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