The masterpieces of French art currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts are on loan from the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, which mainly owes its impressive collection of French art to the Russian industrialists Sergey Ivanovich Schchukin and Ivan Abramovich Morozov, who became devoted collectors of French paintings in the middle of the 19th century.



Their collections were expropriated during the October Revolution and later came into the possession of the Pushkin Museum. It is no wonder therefore, that the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts also briefly introduces these personalities and their approaches to acquiring paintings.

The two rooms in the basement of the museum present a cross section of French art over some 60 years from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century. The juxtaposition of Realism, Impressionism and Symbolism make clear what an atmosphere of change prevailed and how many different styles and schools emerged, some simultaneously.  The first picture that meets the eye in the first room is Jean Baptiste Camille Corot's The Bath of Diana. Here the play between light and shadow reveals the new role of light in painting. The curators cleverly indicate the subsequent development towards Plein Air and Impressionism with Corot's painting. A change in subjects depicted is evident in the Realist pictures. While Jean-Léon Gérome portrays the history of King Candaules, Pascal Dagnan-Bouveret has turned to contemporary topics and everyday people in his Blessing of the Young Couple.



The introduction to Realist pictures, including one by Gustave Courbet, is followed by a series of paintings from the Barbizon school, primarily dedicated to Plein Air painting. While these paintings appear relatively traditional in terms of colours and composition, the adjacent impressionist paintings explode with colour and new ideas. Claude Monet's Haystacks turns the tradition of paintings having a light foreground and darker background on its head: while in The White Water Lilies green sprawls over the water lilies from every direction.

The title of a painting by Edgar Degas Dancer Posing for a Photographer hints at the historical context of Impressionism. It is just a shame that this context of photography is so self-evident to the curators that it is not mentioned in the accompanying texts.

The second room begins with Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh and leads via Symbolism and Fauvism to the Avant-garde movement at the turn of the century. Van Gogh's Prison Courtyard, which he painted in the mental home of Saint-Rémy, is extremely expressive. The various postures of the figures in the very narrow courtyard convey hopelessness and entrapment. Next to this are works by Symbolists, who set out to portray the immaterial or subconscious, such as Eugene Carriere in Her Mother's Kiss. The Fauvist paintings include a self-reference by Henri Matisse: a painting from his The Dance Series features in the background of a still life. The exhibition comes to a close with Fernand Léger, the forerunner of mechanical art, whose Composition points ahead to the later aesthetic of Bauhaus.

Most of the genres are represented by just a handful of pictures, which means it is not possible to look at any particular movement in greater depth. The "From Degas to Picasso" exhibition, however, provides an excellent overview of developments in French painting between 1860 and the First World War, including both very well known and lesser known paintings and subjects.


From Degas to Picasso

Museum of Fine Arts
District XIV, Dózsa György út 41
Open Tues.-Sun. 10am-5.30pm, and Thurs. 10am-8.30pm. Closed Monday.
Tel. (06-1) 469-7100
www.szepmuveszeti.hu
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The only other sight of interest in Debrecen is the Botanic Gardens, on the outskirts of the town near its university complex. The suburbs glimpsed here are an impressive if rather ugly reminder of the fast rate of construction which has taken place in post-war Hungary. From Debrecen, a branch railway line, or a tourist bus, which is quicker, runs to what is considered the most picturesque part of the great plain, Nagy-Hortobagy.

The characteristics of the Puszta are here particularly well displayed: an immense treeless grassy plain enlivened only here and there by the huts of shepherds and other humble buildings surrounded by small groves of acacias. The sunrises are still a fabulous sight, although the 'Pata Morgana', or mirages, which used to be regularly seen during the months of July and August, are rarely in evidence today.

Sadly, Hortobagy has suffered from Hungary's developing tourist industry and there is at first little sign of the deserted rustic or even sleepy atmosphere one would expect. Bus-loads of tourists descend and empty out to buy bottles of the excellent Hungarian schnapps known as barack (pronounced 'barask') or keep a local bootmaker busy with orders. But if one travels by train, the advantage of stopping off at the less well-known settlements between Debrecen and Hortobagy can be quite rewarding. One small halt is unforgettable for the small horse-drawn railway which ferries passengers who alight here across the field to the village. At any of these stops, something of the old Puszta can be glimpsed, although the advances made in modernizing Hungary's agricultural economy since the war means that the Puszta familiar to earlier travellers is now lost forever.

Hortobagy itself, despite its development, is still well worth visiting for its excellent museum, which offers as great an insight into life on the plain as is possible today. Old farm implements and the remarkably practical as well as colourful costumes of the shepherds are displayed along with a fine collection of black-and-white photographs. Faces sand-blasted by the plain's inhospitable climate gaze down, often silhouetted against a distant shimmering horizon. Nearby is the old inn of Hortobagy (good wine) dating from the late eighteenth century, with a newer wing added in 1815. The nine-arch bridge almost opposite is a sombre affair of the 1820S.

From here, depending on transport, it should be possible to get to Szeged, the last great city of the plain, within a few hours. Alternatively it may be useful to return to Debrecen and go on to Transylvania or linger on the great plain and then head north for the hills and the wines of Tokay. All three options are easily accomplished from here.

Szeged Hungary

Szeged is an undeniably attractive place lying on the river Tisza, or Theiss, and well connected with other parts of Hungary by rail and road. If Debrecen is renowned for its austere Calvinism, Szeged enjoys the reputation of being the centre of Hungary's paprika production, that ubiquitous condiment of Hungarian cuisine. This was not always so, however. Indeed, the name Szeged is derived from the word szeg or szek, the local earth which is impregnated by alkaline crystals. These were exposed by the dew and collected with the earth, usually in a ratio of one to three, by the peasants, who then sold it to the soda manufacturers in Szeged. The town still boasts the nineteenth-century architecture of these curious factories, although much of the town was destroyed in 1879 when the river flooded.

The names of the principal boulevards London, Paris, Brussels etc. recall the aid which was received from those places for the reconstruction. The new city was laid out on a grid plan with extensive suburbs, which provoked the comment from one nineteenth-century traveller that Szeged, in spite of its far smaller popu¬lation, was as big as London.

Most of the important buildings of the city are on the left bank, within an inner avenue called Lenin korut. Half-way between this and the river is the heart of the city, Szechenyi Square. Each side of the square has a rather heavy statue illustrating the beneficial and destructive nature of the river Tisza. The building which seems to dominate this area is a curious Neo-Rococo Town Hall; the Tisza Hotel nearby has an adequate cafe. Facing the river, a road to the right leads to the rather more intimate Klauzal ter where, although rather tastelessly modernized, the Royal Hotel is one of the most convenient places to stay in Szeged. But rooms in private houses tend to be more attractive and can be obtained from the tourist office in the Szechenyi Square.

Szeged Festival Hungary

From here Karasz ut leads to the university in Dugonics ter and eventually the arcaded red-brick buildings of Dom ter, at the centre of which is the vast neo-Romanesque Votive church, constructed in the years between 1914 and 1930. Like many buildings of this scale built at that time, it has a cold precision which is not without effect, although its best role is probably as a backdrop to the events of the open-air Szeged festival which takes place here annually.

The St Demetrius Tower, constructed on eleventh-century founda¬tions, adds to this rather stagy ensemble. When the fine musical clock in the arcaded walls of the Dom ter strikes the hours at noon, costumed figures symbolizing the rector, deans and students of the university march in front of the dial of the clock to the strains of a Hungarian folk tune. There are several fine restaurants in the nearby Oskola ut, or by walking down to the river and turning left one comes to the hotel at Roosevelt ter, with its extensive views of 'New Szeged' across the river. Roosevelt Square itself is a more than suitable place to rest as it contains a number of museums, of which the Mora Ferenc, with its collection of paintings and ethnography and 250,000 volumes, is perhaps the most important.

Contemplating the ruins of the old Szeged fortress here, it is hard to imagine that during the empire it was for years the Colditz of the Austrian army, in which Italian prisoners captured during the insur¬rections of the 1848 revolution were kept. An interesting local museum in the fortress is able to recapture this time through old prints and photographs, although the usual inordinate amount of space is devoted to the events of the twentieth-century 'revolutionary' period after the last war.

The nearby floating restaurant, Szoke Tisza, is best visited during the summer, when a slight breeze along the river comes as a relief in what can be one of the most humid parts of the Great Plain.

Continuing along the river bank, the magnificent National Theatre, yet another work of that ubiquitous nineteenth-century duo Helmer and Fellner, grandly dominates the river along with the rather less imposing Baroque Serbian Orthodox church and the picturesque Fekete house, from which any number of winding roads lead back to the Szechenyi Square.

The Franciscan Church at Szeged Hungary

All that now remains to be seen in the town is the magnificent former Franciscan church, which lies in the south-west of the city centre and can be best reached quickly by taxi from Szechenyi Square. According to local records this impressive Gothic edifice was begun in the late thirteenth century but was, according to a stone dated 1503 on the exterior of the south falYade, finished only in the sixteenth century. Inside the decoration is Baroque and attributed to a Franciscan monk by the name of Antal Graff. The single barn-like space of the interior, with its light airy Gothic rib-vaulting, is a suitable foil to the Baroque dec¬oration of the pulpit, side altars and other items of GraWs Baroque furniture.

Josef Aisenhut, a native of the Rhineland, is responsible for the high altar's eighteenth-century paintings, while those of the side altars de-picting St John Nepomuk and St Francis are the work of a contemporary Viennese painter, Josef Hautzinger. A curious small Romanesque window in the south wall of the sacristy suggests that parts of an earlier building on this site may have been incorporated into the church. The sacristy itself contains a number of rather fine Baroque chests. A Franciscan museum attached contains several objects of ecclesiastical interest. The nearby Franciscan monastery building is of the Baroque period and has maintained a fine library.

The New Synagogue at Szeged Hungary

Another church which should not be missed, especially by devotees of art-nouveau, is the New Synagogue, designed by Lipot Bauhorn at the turn of the century in the Josika utca, near Lenin korut. Its dome is visible from most parts of the inner town. (The usual rules on headdress are applicable here; the porter will open the church for a small sum applies at Josika utca 10.) The interior is unforgettable for the colours of its stained glass, while a remarkable studded ark of the covenant made of Egyptian acacia will also be shown on application to the authorities.

The other side of the river is made up of newer residential blocks and the twenty-eight acres of the university botanical garden, which contains more than 1,500 tropical plants. If a stay of longer than a day is contemplated, there is one of the most attractive bird reserves in Europe in the form of a large sodium carbonate lake known as Feherto. Liveliest in spring and autumn during the time of the great migrations, this is the northernmost stopping place for several rare species.

Szentes Hungary

From Szeged a small road numbered 25 and then 28 leads to Szentes, passing through typical Puszta country. It is recommended for those wishing to return to Budapest by hire car more slowly. Szentes itself has an interesting museum which charts the great migrations across the plain. Although a very small settlement, it has both private rooms and a reasonable hotel with thermal baths. From Szentes, the road leads north-west towards Kecskemet and the hills, an area renowned for the quality of its vines and grapes and apricots, from which the famous barack aperitif is made.

Much of Kecskemit´s architecture is turn-of-the-century and will thrill Jugenastil enthusiasts. Its large squares and brightly coloured facades, although under attack by recent developments, still offer a pleasing townscape.

The town itself dates from the Middle Ages, having enjoyed several trading and legal privileges in the fourteenth century. Unlike most of the towns of the plain, the century and a half of Turkish rule here brought progress rather than destruction. Many of the inhabitants of the medieval villages sought refuge in Kecskemet, which was a protectorate of the Sultan. During this time the guilds of the town flourished and the place became one of the busiest trading centres in Central Europe.

The centre of the town is a pair of wide squares onto which most of the principal roads seem to converge. Szabadsag ter is dominated by an exotic art-nouveau workers' club originally built as a people's house, like that in Prague near the Powder Tower. Its name, the Cifra Palace, seems just as exotic as its appearance.

Also on the square is a nineteenth-century synagogue embracing an older building of 1818. The prominent situation of this building and its obvious wealth recalls the importance of the Jews in the trade of south¬eastern Europe. Every town of any note in this part of Hungary boasts a synagogue, which usually, though not always, survived the Nazis. In the early years of the war, Hungary, virtually alone of Germany's allies in Eastern Europe, spared the Jews, gipsies and other non-Aryans pursued by the Third Reich.

Quite near the synagogue is the Calvinist church, which was built between 1680 and 1684; although its rather more decorated interior is late Baroque of the early 1790S. These buildings are the main delights of this square along with other humbler buildings, although unfortunately it also contains the modern six-storey Aranyhomok (Golden Sand) Hotel. The adjoining Kossuth ter is the administrative centre of the town, with a dazzling art-nouveau Town Hall designed by our old friend the Jugendstil architect of Budapest's Applied Arts Museum, Odon Lechner. The interior is open to the public and contains several other works of art-nouveau, including a wall painting in the ceremonial hall by Bertalan Szekely illustrating the Hungarian conquest.