My wife and I had the chance to spend a few days in Budapest recently, our first visit to Hungary. One afternoon, we visited the M?csarnok Kunsthalle museum, which includes an exhibit of works related to the discovery of Hungarian folk art and lore by artists, musicians, and writers in the early part of the 20th century. Among the items on display was the above portrait, taken from Hungary, written by the English landscape artist Adrian Stokes and featuring paintings made by Stokes and his wife Marianne during a long visit to the country in 1908.
Fortunately, the book is available on the Internet Archive (link), because copies of the original 1909 edition sell for upwards of $75 — which isn’t a horrible price for a book that features 75 gorgeous color prints of Hungarian landscapes by Stokes and portraits by his wife. With the exception of the sunset view of the Margit Bridge and Hungarian Parliament building below, Stokes’ landscapes do not leap off the page.
But it’s the portraits by Marianne Stokes that make the book so memorable. They reach back to the Flemish masters (particularly “Prayer for the Dead”) and reach forward to the modernist realism of Andrew Wyeth (“Slovak Girl in Sunday Attire”).
The Stokes found many of the rural Hungarian people they encountered very reluctant to be painted. Adrian writes that men would head off the road and into the fields if they saw him setting up his easel. When Marianne offered payment for agreeing to pose, villagers would say they didn’t need the money as their relatives in America sent cash on a regular basis. One of the exceptions (though still reluctant) was Misko, a young boy they met in Vazsecz (now Važec, Slovakia):
Among my wife’s models was a boy named Misko — a dear little fellow nine or ten years old. Babyhood seemed still to linger about his eyes and mouth, but in spirit he was a labourer and a politician, as the red feather in his hat proclaimed him. Misko was amiable when not asked to sit. He underwent the martyrdom of posing twice, but nothing would induce him to come again. He willingly consented, however, to be our guide for four or five miles over the hills to the Black Vag, where we were going for a day’s fishing, and a gallant little cavalier he was! He spread branches and leaves in wet places for my wife to walk over, and offered his help at every difficulty on her path. At lunch, when we had given him a share of our cold chicken, he remained quietly at a little distance until he had unwrapped his own food, consisting of bread and a thick piece of bacon. He then cut the best part out of the middle of the bacon and came to offer it to us. My wife found it a joy to be with him, and I was able to proceed with my fishing without feeling that she was neglected.