Fishermen's Hut at the Lake Balaton
by MÉSZÖLY, Géza, Oil on canvas, 140 x 226 cm
This large canvas, the masterwork of M�sz�ly, was made in Munich. It was commissioned by �gost Trefort, Minister of Culture, in 1874 for the Hungarian National Museum.
Art historians often connect M�sz�ly’s name with that of Camille Corot and by the beginning of this century he was labelled “the Hungarian Corot”. Indeed, M�sz�ly’s art is related to Corot’s and the later French plein air painters. With their mother-of-pearl, hazy colours, the pictorial values of representation and their intimate mood, they are quite reminiscent of the great lyricist among nineteenth-century French landscape painters. No wonder that foreign art dealers sold M�sz�ly’s pictures signed with Corot’s name to American collectors. There was even a big scandal - the best known among several - when, in the early 1900s a poor-quality, slightly modified copy of M�sz�ly’s Fishermen’s Hut on Lake Balaton was exhibited at the Modern Art Gallery of Dublin as an original Corot.