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Picnic in May
Pál Szinyei Merse · Impressionism
- Artist
- Pál Szinyei Merse (1845–1920)
- Date
- 1873
- Dimensions
- 127 x 162.5 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary
Picnic in May shows a group of elegant young people relaxing on a sunlit grassy slope on a spring day: women in light dresses, men in straw hats, a picnic cloth spread on the grass, under a vast blue sky.
A closer look
The bright greens of the meadow, the blue of the sky, the white and red of the clothes are set side by side in fresh, unmixed colours, flooded with daylight. Szinyei painted the scene in Munich in 1873, independently of the French Impressionists, whose first exhibition took place a year later. Yet when he exhibited it, critics in Vienna and Budapest rejected its daring colours, and the painter, discouraged, almost gave up painting for years. Only decades later was the painting recognised as a masterpiece of Hungarian art.
More by Pál Szinyei Merse
In this gallery
Famous works elsewhere
- Lady in Violet 1874
- Lovers 1870
- Old Slovak Peasant 1884
- Faun/on the other side Lovers/ 1867
- Faun and Nymph 1868
- The Artist's Studio 1873