Dobozi and his Spouse

The young Viktor Madar�sz fought throughout the entire War of Independence. After a short study-trip to Vienna, he lived in Paris for fourteen years, where he was influenced by his teachers, L�on Cogniet and Paul Delaroche. Yet, Dobozi, and His Spouse painted in 1868, two years before his return home, shows the impact of Delacroix’s Romanticism.

The landscape and the horse - depicted as a magic steed - reveal the horror of the last moments of the couple running away in full gallop from the blood-thirsty Turks; on realizing that there is no escape, they commit suicide. The wide horizontal format and the horizontal line of the clouds at sun-set are used to emphasize the deadly speed of the race.

In different forms, the Dobozi theme was depicted repeatedly by Hungarian painters during the 19th century, for whom the suicide of the couple symbolized the idea of choosing death instead of slavery.