Mihály Munkácsy

It was the wife of his dear friend, the painter Chaplin, who persuaded Munkácsy to write down his memoirs. The writing was meant to resolve his childhood traumas, since these were seen as the cause of the melancholy that overshadowed his whole life. Although the publisher fictionalised several passages, Munkácsy’s life did indeed begin in difficult circumstances. After he had lost both his parents by the age of eight, he was taken in by an uncle, who apprenticed the poorly performing boy to a carpenter. Because of the artist’s early experiences, his genre pictures depicting the everyday life of the poor are often regarded as autobiographically motivated.

From the page of The Condemned Cell