Count Gyula Batthyány

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P ÉTER M OLNOS

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Text by Péter Molnos Design & Typography by Árpád Fákó Idea by Tamás Kieselbach The artworks were selected by Tamás Kieselbach & Péter Molnos Translated by Andrea Magyari Translation revised by Andrew T. Gane Edited by Judit Borus

Sponsored by Kieselbach Galéria és Aukciósház

Mediasponsor: Artmagazin

Gratitude is expressed to all those who contributed to the publication of this book.

Tamás Kieselbach, Judit Virág, Marianna Kolozsváry, Mariann Szabó, István Rozsics, István Pongrácz, Alexander Bródy, Lászó Carl, Szilárd Izsák Sipos, Károly Szabó, László Csere, Tamás Kárpáti, István Bódi, Dr. György Gyarmati, Csaba Nagyházi, Tamás Forró, László Kis Horváth, Andrea, Mrs. Levente Nagy, Zsófia Nemes, Erika Orlik, Tamás Csáki, András Szücs, Gyöngyvér Kolozsváry, László Szabó, Lívia Orbán, András Nagy, Mária Izsák, Péter Nemes

Photographs: György Darabos (Kieselbach Archives); Tibor Mester; Zsuzsanna Berényi; István Füzi; Bence Tihanyi; Ágnes Bakos; Hungarian National Museum, Historical Photo Collection; Hungarian National Film Archive; National Széchényi Library, Theatre Collection; Museum of Transportation; Árpád Fákó; Péter Molnos

DTP: Árpád Fákó; Eper Grafikai Stúdió System operator: István Haraszti Csacsa CTP: GMN Repró Stúdió Printing and binding: Pauker Printinghouse, Budapest Responsible Manager: Gábor Vértes, managing director

NÉPSZABADSÁG BOOKS Published by Népszabadság Zrt., Budapest, 2007 Responsible Editor: Tibor Kovács, CEO

Text © Péter Molnos Design © Árpád Fákó Editor © Népszabadság Zrt.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers.

Cover image: Women with Hats, 1930s ISBN 978 963 9709 47 8

N É P S Z A B A D S Á G

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B O O K S

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CONTENTS F OREWORD AT

THE

BY

T OP

T AMÁS K IESELBACH

OF THE

.............................6

H UNGARIAN A RISTOCRACY

.................8

“It was a pleasant life…” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 The “Gallery of Ancestors” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

S TART !

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

“A terrible storm swept through Europe” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 The Ballets Russes in Hungary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 “Count Gyula Batthyány robs a bicycle from Count Imre Széchenyi” . . . . . . . . . . 26

T HE

PAINTER OF HIGH SOCIETY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Aristocratic women in hidden pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Gyula Batthyány: Notes from a Painter’s Travel Diary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

A S ENSUOUS G AME T HE

IN A

D ECADENT W ORLD

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

UNIVERSAL ARTIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

Only pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

IN

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W ORLD O UT

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A RTWORKS

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

B IOGRAPHY

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208

L IST

OF

T HE

MOST IMPORTANT EXHIBITIONS

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G YULA B ATTHYÁNY ’ S

B IBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228

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FOREWORD

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It was almost thirty years ago that I first encountered Gyula Batthyány’s art, at the MOM Community Centre, where an exhibition was being held by BÁV. At the time, BÁV was a state-owned company and the only organisation permitted to trade in art in Hungary.

These auctions were celebrations for me; I attended every exhibition at least four times. On one of these occasions I discovered Gyula Batthyány’s paintings: they were unusual works and very different from any pictures I had seen before. The world that he created was exciting for me, and I wanted to own his paintings.

I bought my first Batthyány painting, which wa followed by further acquisitions, in the second half of the 1980s. A few years later I managed to acquire Carousel, one of the most important pieces of the oeuvre. I could buy it only on hire purchase, and for the amount I paid, I could have bought several paintings by József Rippl-Rónai instead. But I needed that picture, because I was always interested in masterpieces reflecting the quality of a painter’s work.

In recent years, I have spoken to many people from the world of art, including collectors, art dealers and art historians. I usually know their tastes: I know their favourites and I can guess when they will turn their noses up at something. I have met a lot of people who look at Batthyány’s works with repulsion. Others admire them. But I have never met anybody who remained indifferent to his art.

This makes it worth paying attention to the artist.

I have always thought that if an artist is able to generate an intense aversion, his work must conceal something important, striking a note to which sensitive nerve endings resonate. I have participated

in several discussions about Gyula Batthyány’s art.

I have always argued for it, while looking forward to the time when I could also point to the artist’s failings.

We have not reached that time, however, as Batthyány’s art has yet to attain the reputation it deserves.

People’s tastes and judgements vary. And the real connoisseur knows that art is never a race on a single track; one cannot demand the same norms from different artists. Quality is not only achieved through the constructive creation of forms and reductionism.

Similarly, clean silent voices, plebeian Puritanism or artistic asceticism are not the only means of creating value. Gyula Batthyány is not Gyula Derkovits or Lajos Kassák. In painting, just as in music, there are different genres and styles—each bearing its own intrinsic value. We admire the works of Sargent, Boldini, Lempicka and Fülöp László, even though they evoke a sensual visual experience and uninhibited joy rather than dramatic shock.

There is more than one list of top artists.

When, after the success of the album on Vilmos Aba-Novák, Népszabadság Publishing House asked me to recommend a twentieth-century Hungarian painter for a new series of books, I immediately thought of Gyula Batthyány. Not only because his peculiar painting style and exciting world serve to guarantee success both in Hungary and abroad, but also because his career and fate are so closely linked with Hungary’s turbulent history over the past century. Indeed, through his figure it is possible to model a way of interpretation that enables us to present Hungarian painting abroad.

I have always thought that these two fields should be combined; Hungary’s special feature is its past: the series of attacks that Hungary had to suffer again and again in the twentieth century. There is no other land whose elite was tortured and swept away so many times. Hungary has no rivals in this field.

Two years ago, a prominent review was published in a magazine concerning the second volume of the album Modern Hungarian Painting. The reviewer argued that Batthyány’s figure had been overstressed in the album and found fault with the number of the Battyhány reproductions in the book.

As the editor of the volume, I answered as follows: “It is surely difficult to understand that someone who is enthusiastic about Vajda, who prefers silent, clean tones in art, can see the quality of Batthyány’s painting. However, one can enjoy raspberry juice just as much as fine wine, as well as different kinds of mineral water. It is possible to recognize value in different fields. I have spent much time visiting museums abroad. I have learnt that our art can look quite different from abroad, in the eyes of the world, and that people’s relationship to pictures is defined by different ‘legal’ tastes and artistic value judgements. Batthyány’s art represents a great opportunity for Hungarian painting to gain international fame. People abroad react to his art in a more sensitive way than to the pieces of our ‘crystallized’ artists. It is a real chance, because—if the pieces are chosen and organized with competence—the virtuosic and sensual themes he chose can serve as the foundation of success.”

Tamás Kieselbach

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START!

“I became a painter without any difficulties…”

G YULA B ATTHYÁNY AND K ATALIN A NDRÁSSY TAKE OFF S HOOTING OF THE FILM T HE 300- YEAR - OLD MAN , 1914, P HOTOGRAPH

H

is family, his high birth and the strength of aristocracy, which was able to provide culture and open doors, all contributed to the development of Batthyány’s artistic character and his unmistakable painting style. The well-travelled Batthyány, who was

highly cultured and knew the masterpieces of former times just as well as those of his contemporaries, could experience a respect for art and its characterbuilding features quite differently from his fellowpainters, who usually tried to go their chosen ways

BY

L AJOS S ZÔNYI

troubled by financial problems. Despite the fact that his financial and cultural inheritance was quite different from that of his fellows, Batthyány studied at the traditional schools in Budapest, Munich and Paris, under the well-known teachers.

G YULA B ATTHYÁNY : L UXURIATING ,

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1912 (Detail)

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S T A R T !

A DOLF M ÜNZER : L ADY

J ÁNOS V ASZARY : F ANCY D RESS B ALL , 1907

“He has painted since he was three and calls Vaszary his master.”

The details of the relationship between János Vaszary and Gyula Batthyány are not really known. In the biographies, there are only a few sentences referring to the master-student relationship of the two artists.

Battyhány must have been given the first instructions from his uncle, Tivadar Andrássy, who was an autodidact but painted regularly and passionately. Nevertheless, it was János Vaszary whom he called his first

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master. Vaszary, who had become a well-known painter by the first years of the twentieth century, must have met the young Batthyány through the various artistic bodies where members of the Batthyány and Andrássy families held important positions. It is also possible that they became acquainted with each other through the families’ art collections, as there were enthusiastic collectors in both families. Vaszary’s striking paintings were included in the collections quite early on, at the beginning of the 1900s and Lajos Batthyány, Gyula Batthyány’s father invited the painter to their castle in Ikervár. On the estate land, which was situated close to the River Rába in Vas

WITH A

B OUQUET (J UGEND ), 1901

County, Vaszary, who had returned from Spain with important artistic experiences, painted several landscapes and compositions with figures. The half-figure portrait of Gyula Batthyány’s mother, which is dated 23 August, 1905, was also painted here. Vaszary wrote about it to his fiancée in a deeply moved tone: “This afternoon I have drawn Her Grace. Thank God, the drawing is really good. Everybody liked it a lot, and His Grace wants to keep it. Tomorrow afternoon I am going to paint Her Grace in a sketch. I am begging God that I will be able to paint a good picture.”

During his stay in Ikervár in the summer of 1905, Vaszary regularly helped the young Gyula Batthyány, who passed his final exams at that time and was in need of guidance and support since he felt an eager desire to become an artist. (They must have met before that summer as well, but the length and intensity of the time spent together has not been revealed so far.) The young painter was in luck, as Vaszary, who got back from Spain in the middle of July 1905, was enjoying a highly inventive period of his artistic life.

The experiences of his study tour had inspired him a lot. Velasquez, the modern Spanish painters, including Ignazio Zuloaga and Sorolla I Bastida, who were on the brink of world fame, had made a great impression on his artistic ideas. His palette became more colourful, his brushwork easier, and the light, generous elegance which later became a distinguishing feature of his artwork appeared in his pictures at that time.

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A DOLF M ÜNZER : L ADIES (J UGEND ), 1901

Vaszary’s decorative, melodically winding brushwork and his compositions with different shapes crammed together often recur in Batthyány’s early pictures.

Above: G YULA B ATTHYÁNY : B ALL , 1906

Below: G YULA B ATTHYÁNY : H IGH S OCIETY ,

AROUND

1905

“The next step was to go abroad…”

Gyula Batthyány’s biography, which was pieced together from the publications of the period and from his responses to reporters and interviewers, needs to be set straight. The artist himself contributed to the blur by giving various dates of birth and by being deliberately misleading in connection with his art studies. The only detail which can be backed by verified data is the one about which the painter usually remained silent, namely his attendance at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts from 1905 to 1907. Since none of his teachers had a great effect on him, none of their names can be found in the painter’s later curriculum vitaes and in interviews he gave touching upon his past. We do know, however, that in addition to studying art, Batthyány also studied law. This was his parents’ wish.

Nevertheless, after he managed to convince his father of the seriousness of his artistic endeavours, his parents relented.

In the second part of the decade, presumably in 1907, Batthyány went to Munich and enrolled at the Academy of Art. The popular belief born in the nine-

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L EO P UTZ : W OMAN

WITH A

C AT , 1910

teenth century according to which Paris was the land of promise for young painters and the Bavarian capital was just a provincial town smelling of beer and occupied by art dealers with dated tastes, was changing at the time of Batthyány’s stay in Munich. In the period before the establishment of the group Der Blaue Reiter, modern art gained ground in the most prominent art galleries of the city. Exhibitions opened which presented of the works of the French Impressionism and Postimpressionism, and in 1907, Van Gogh’s paintings were presented at a prominent exhibition.

Nevertheless, Munich was not famous for this, and for Batthyány it was not Paris that meant an important impulse. What really influenced him was the essence of the art of the city: the Jugendstil.

In Batthyány’s works painted between 1906 and 1914, most of which are known only from photographs, one can easily recognize the effect of the

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G YULA B ATTHYÁNY : L ADY

Jugendstil, Munich’s Art Nouveau. The idiom of the new style, which gained ground all over the world, appeared in the Jugend, the eponymous magazine of the trend, which, in its importance, was similar to the French Revue Blanche, and served as a kind of pattern-book of the Art Nouveau. The popular magazine, which was published from 1896, and was subscribed to by both the Batthyány and Andrássy families, regularly published paintings and drawings by Angelo Jank, who was Batthyány’s teacher at the Academy, and by several leading Jugendstil artists. Leo Putz’s pictures, which were rich in ornaments, had a great effect on the young Batthyány’s art. Putz’s artistic method can be connected to that of Batthyány not only through the formal characteristics and the Art Nouveau lineation of the brushwork but also through the crammed compositions, which evoke the suffocating feeling of overcrowdedness, and the sensual

WITH A

P ARROT ,

AROUND

1920

sultriness flirting with perversity appearing on the pictures. These latter features, which show themselves in both the themes and the painting style of the artists, connect Putz’s art to that of Zuolaga as well, who often exhibited in the Secession in Munich. They all liked the grotesque and the exotic, chose their themes with great insight and put the paint onto the canvas with a kind of sensuality, almost wet-like eroticism. All of them, but especially Zuloaga and Batthyány, crammed the bending parts of forms onto the surface of the picture until a point when the carpet-like composition, which handled all elements of the aspect as equal, set into a heavy mass. Their basically Manierist attitude, which is manifested in their choice of colours, the method of the composition and the distortion of the forms suggest that both of them drew a lot from El Greco’s art, which was discovered at that time.

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L ÉON B AKST : T HE D INNER , 1902

“New worlds opened to me…”

After the years in Munich, Batthyány served as a volunteer in the Hussar Regiment in Budapest then, following the old artist tradition, travelled to Paris.

Presumably, he studied at the Julian Academy from 1910 to 1913, though the lasting inspiration came not from the school or an exhibition but from the guest performances of the Ballets Russes in Paris. Diaghilev’s company, the members of which were chosen from the best dancers of the former czarist ballet and the company in Saint Petersburg, became world-famous in those years. In an interview given in 1940, Batthyány described his first encounter with the company as follows: “The world-famous Ballets Russes came to the city at that time. Leon Bakst was the drawer of the ballet. New worlds opened to me. I am very proud to

A LICE N IKITINA AND S ERGE L IFAR , THE STARS OF THE B ALLETS R USSES , AROUND 1927

S CENE

have been his friend. The great art of the Ballets Russes had a staggering effect on me.”

The dancers—Vaslav Nijinsky, Tamara Karsavina, Olga Pavlova, their partners, Leon Bakst and Alexandre Benois, who evoked the versatility of the Renaissance artists—and the stage and costume designers had a sweeping success in Paris, London, Budapest and Vienna and, perhaps for the first time in history, they fertilized Western art with Russian culture.

Because of his personality, his refined aesthetic sense and his homosexuality, Batthyány was attracted to the new Ballets Russes (which spanned the differences between the sexes), to their sublime homosexuality and to the misogynist Diaghilev. Decades later, in the mid-1930s, Batthyány still had a close relationship to some members of the company. In 1937, he painted the portrait of Tamara Karsavina, the popular dancer, who lived in Budapest for a long time. The painter must

have met Nijinsky as well, as in 1913 the dancer, having escaped from the love of Diaghilev, married Romola de Pulszky, who was the daughter of Batthyány’s friend, Emília Márkus. The marriage shocked everybody and created a stir, and later Nijinsky spent several years in Budapest, struggling with his schizophrenia.

FROM A PERFORMANCE BY THE

AROUND

B ALLETS R USSES ,

1927

“Yesterday we did not know who he was and where he was going…”

On the basis of some contemporary sources, it would appear that Batthyány spent some time in Florence at the beginning of the 1910s. An article from 1911 reads as follows: “Young Gyula Batthyány, the son of Count Lajos Batthyány and Countess Ilona Andrássy, who began his studies at the Academy Julien in Paris, is

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S T A R T !

travelling to Florence these days where he is going to set up a studio and work. The young count, who has already made several pictures and sketches, will present a one-man-show after his return.” It is not known whether Batthyány travelled to Florence or not, but the show mentioned in the article opened in February 1914. At the exhibition in the Ernst Museum, Batthyány presented his work, together with Fülöp Ö.

Beck, exhibiting 114 pictures, most of which—according to the reproductions and the catalogue—were aquarelles and graphics, but there were some impressive oil paintings as well. Almost ninety percent of the pictures were destroyed or still lie hidden, but about two-thirds of the exhibition can be identified on the basis of black-and-white photos, with the help of the catalogue, the reproductions published in the magazine Gyûjtô and the photographs which remained in the artist’s estate. We learn from these works that the Munich and Paris Art Nouveau, the visual effects of

the magazines of the Gil Blas and the Jugend, and the characteristics of Leo Putz, Angelo Jank, Paul Rieth and Adolf Münzer’s art had all influenced Batthyány, but that the style of Ignazio Zuloaga and the Belgian Frank Brangwyn, who was known throughout Europe, had affected him the most. Convinced of the superiority of avant-garde aesthetics, some art historians have ignored these two “stars” of the period, whom Batthyány must have met during his years in Munich and Paris. Their art, which is full of fantasy and rich in form, became well-known in Hungary in the autumn of 1913, when the Ernst Museum organized a representative exhibition of their paintings.

“A great viewing public, a huge success…

I thought everything was fine, and then came the war…”

1914 was a crucial year in Batthyány’s life. His first exhibition in Hungary was a great success, not only among the critics but also among the collectors, who began to buy his pictures. He joined a new group called the Céhbeliek Társasága (Guildsmen’s Club), many of whose members were artists in the art colony of Gödöllô. His pictures also appeared at the exhibitions of the Nemzeti Szalon and Mûvészház. Hardly had he made his name in Hungary when he got his first invitation from abroad: six of his paintings were chosen for the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, which opened in San Francisco in 1915, where he won a silver medal.

Abowe: G YULA B ATTHYÁNY : I N

A

T URKISH S TYLE I,

AROUND

Below: G YULA B ATTHYÁNY : I LLUSTRIOUS C OMPANY IN THE O PEN A IR , AROUND 1910

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1914

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Nevertheless, he could not enjoy his success for long. In 1914, World War I broke out. Like many other young aristocrats, he immediately joined the army reserve. On 20 November, 1914, before setting off for the front, he married Countess Zsuzsanna Károlyi, who was the daughter of Count Gyula Károlyi and the legendary society woman, Countess Geraldine Pálffy.

The wedding ceremony was held in Fehérvár-Csurgó, where Batthyány’s witness was Gyula Andrássy. The marriage was very important for the Batthyány family, as with the help of the bride’s huge dowry the family’s financial situation could be reset, and even the Batthyány castle, which was built in Bicske at the end of the eighteenth century and was alienated in 1863, returned to the family—though only for two decades.

T HE MEDAL OF THE P ANAMA -P ACIFIC E XHIBITION S AN F RANCISCO , 1915

IN

Abowe: T HE B ATTHYÁNY C ASTLE

IN

B ICSKE , 2007

Below: G YULA B ATTHYÁNY : L ONG C HAMPS ,

AROUND

1910

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S T A R T !

“A

TERRIBLE STORM

SWEPT THROUGH

E UROPE ” E XT RACTS

F R OM

T H E M E MO I R S O F K ATA L I N A N D RÁ S SY, G Y U L A B AT T H YÁ N Y ’ S CO U S I N

One of the first battles on the northern front ended with a catastrophic defeat. A Hungarian hussar detachment was sent to fight, as though we were still living in the nineteenth century.

The soldiers lashed out at the enemy wearing their old-fashioned blue “atilla” coats and red trousers.

The sun sparkled on their swords–and the Russian machine-guns cut them down like a reaper does the wheat. Gyula Batthyány, who–as his father ensured–was given lodgings at the headquarters, regularly sent home his optimistic letters, writing how the Russian artillery shot with blank cartridges, how cowardly the Russian imperial forces were, and how they immediately withdrew whenever the Hungarian cavalry began an attack.

The summer of 1914. A terrible storm swept through Central Europe. It tore up the trees by the roots in the valleys near Tiszadob.

The sand of the Great Plain was whirling around the towers of the castle and the world was wrapped in a yellowish dusk.

Some days later we were informed that the crown prince Franz Ferdinand and his morganatic wife, Sophie, had been murdered in Sarajevo. We did not like him and he did not like the Hungarians.

Still, everybody thought that the Serbians should be punished for this villainous act.

September 15, 1914 Gyula wrote an interesting letter.

He recounted how most of the Russian shrapnels had not exploded, and how the Russian cannon-balls were small and pointed. They can make beautiful injuries, if you let me use this adjective here.

They shoot very badly. The part in Satanoff, where Gyula is staying now, is completely destroyed.

The news is all false. An officer told me that he had seen Gyula jumping into a river on his horse and that he had been shot.

His name was there on the list of the dead.

When the Serbians refused the ultimatum, the patriotic enthusiasm of the public just grew.

People were demonstrating under the windows of our mansion by the Margit pier. They wanted to hear Uncle Duci. Although he, as an aristocrat, despised “the mob”, nevertheless we all had to go to the balcony where the men in the family made patriotic speeches while the crowd clapped enthusiastically. Rhetorical speech is usually an innate talent of Hungarian people, and Gyula, who really looked charming in his uniform, knew exactly what to say. He said: “Do not applaud us, we have done nothing yet. Wait until we come back triumphantly, wait until we teach those cheeky Serbians a lesson.”

Most male members of the family volunteered to join the mechanized troops, and some of them went to the front in their own cars.

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C OUNT G YULA B ATTHYÁNY AS A LIEUTENANT IN THE WAR ,

1914

Zsuzsanna and Juliette Károlyi were getting older, so they were forced to lower their expectations. At the end of World War I, Zsuzsanna got engaged to my cousin, Gyula Batthyány.

This was a stroke of good fortune for the Batthyánys, as Uncle Lajos and his passions, had once again brought the family to the brink of financial ruin.

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T HE B ALLETS R USSES IN H UNGARY

T AMARA K ARSAVINA AND V ASLAV N IJINSKY IN THE BALLET Le Spectre de la rose

The Ballets Russes, which went on European tours from 1909, went on the stage in Budapest in 1912, at the so-called Népopera (Peoples’ Opera, today’s Erkel Theatre). The intendant, the legendary Diaghilev, ruled his chosen company like a despot; the stage designer was Alexander Benois, while Léon Bakst designed the costumes. Mikhail Fokin’s revolutionary modern choreographies were performed by the most famous dancers of the period: Vaslav Nijinsky, Adolf Bolm, Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina and Ida Rubinstein.

The company was tremendously successful in Budapest, and thus in late December of the same year they returned and performed the ballet “Le Spectre de la rose”. Nijinsky’s inimitable leap at the end of the play, which became the dancer’s

trademark, is an outstanding moment in the history of dancing. Nijinsky, who was Diaghilev’s great love, danced in this role several times in Budapest in the season of 1912–1913, enchanting his future wife, Romola de Pulszky, Emília Márkus’s daughter, who watched him from her box with great admiration. Almost two decades later she recalled their first encounter as follows: “The strength of his movement, its lightness, his steely elasticity, flexibility and his unbelievable talent, as he ascended, stayed in the air and descended twice as slowly as he rose…

This admirable creature was Nijinsky. From this moment on, my only desire was to learn more about the art and life of this exceptional company, about the atmosphere, and about the artists.”

It is worth citing the words of Nándor Újhelyi, a critic who wrote for the famous magazine Nyugat, to show that Nijinsky’s performance impressed men as well as women: “Seeing all the charm, ephemeral joy, dream-like grace, all that beautiful feminine affinements as it can be felt in the dance of this white-skinned man, as it gains a peculiar taste, a strange and hidden sauce from his masculinity, well, seeing this Russian young man (who is the most beautiful Greek youth of Pericles’ Athens) I can perfectly understand Plato and all that, unfortunately, I haven’t got in me.” “He was the masterpiece himself,” said Diaghilev, describing him.

And several artists of the time were of the same opinion, from Cocteau to Rodin. Romola de Pulszky cherished a mad idea: she wanted to get married to Nijinsky, whose homosexuality was a well-known fact and whom his jealous master, Diaghilev, guarded. To achieve her goal, the girl joined the company as a dancer and in 1913, when they went on a tour in South America, Nijinsky popped the question on the night before the last of their 21-day journey.

His motivation for the marriage is unknown even today.

The jealous intendant’s revenge, which was reported in the newspapers all over the world, broke Nijinsky’s career. The dancer tried to set up a company but he failed, and after the birth of their beautiful daughter, Kyra, the couple returned to Budapest on July 22, 1914.

Soon World War I broke out, and they were forced to stay in Hungary: as Nijinsky was a Russian citizen, he had to be placed under house arrest in the villa in Hıvösvölgy and could leave Hungary only in January 1916. In 1919, Romola Pulszky was informed that her husband was insane, he was incurable and required continuous treatment.

Subsequently, Nijinsky spent most of his time in various sanatoriums, but he visited Hungary several times, for instance in 1920 and in 1936, when Kyra was married. We do not know exactly how Gyula Batthyány and Nijinsky met, but their first meeting was probably in Budapest, as the painter was a good friend of Emília Márkus, who entertained a great deal. Together with his mother, the count must have been a frequent visitor to the house where the dancer stayed.

G YULA B ATTHYÁNY : T HE P ORTRAIT OF T AMARA K ARSAVINA , 1936 (Detail)

The wedding, which made a stir, was held in Buenos Aires on September 10, 1913. Thereafter the couple travelled to Budapest so that Romola could introduce her husband, whom her parents had known only from the stage. It was in the family’s villa that Nijinsky got the famous telegram, which read as follows: “The Ballets Russes does not require your services in the future. Do not join us. Sergei Diaghilev.”

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S T A R T !

„C OUNT GYULA B ATTHYÁNY ROBS A BICYCLE FROM C OUNT I MRE S ZÉCHENYI ” The surrealistic sentence cited above is not a fantasy: this is a caption under a photo which was taken at the shooting of the silent movie The 300 year-old man in the spring of 1914 and was published in the first issue of the magazine Független Mozinapló in April. The silent movie, which was shot

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in Kolozsvár, is a curiosity in the history of the genre. The script was written by Sándor Bródy and Endre Nagy; the director was Aladár Fodor and all the roles were played by amateur actors, counts and countesses.

The story covers three centuries and the main character is Count Bálint, a lord from the seventeenth century who fights with Count Lôrinc for the love of Countess Borbála. The young lord, whose character was played by the 24-year-old Gyula Batthyány, gets into 1914 in his dream, where he goes through funny adventures. He appears at the Ritz Hotel, where people are dancing the popular matschiche brasilienne. The humour of the situation is that the young count coming from the past cannot

find his way in the modern world: he just stumbles about among the cars, airplanes and bicycles.

István Csáky, István Dessewffy, Mihály Andrássy, Ádám Vay, Katalin Széchenyi, Antal Wenkheim and Ferenc Eszterházy also appear in the film besides Gyula Batthyány. It must have been a spicy circumstance of the shooting that Katinka Andrássy, whom Batthyány’s parents would have liked to be their son’s wife, played the count’s love.

Ninety-six percent of Hungarian silent movies were destroyed, including all copies of The 300-year-old man. The source of the pictures published is a decorative photo album from the collection of the Magyar Nemzeti Filmarchívum (Hungarian National Film Archives).

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ARTWORKS “Art should be the triumph of joy; and the orgy of all beauty.”

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1. Self-Portrait with Drawing-Board, around 1902

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2. Nude in Bentwood Chair, around 1903

3. Nude Sitting, around 1903

4. Woman Leaning on Her Elbow, around 1903

5. Woman in an Armchair, around 1903

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6. Self portrait, around 1906

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7. Procession, around 1907

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8. In a Stage-Box, around 1906

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9. Reception, around 1906

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10. Polo, around 1908

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11. Polo, 1908

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12. Ladies in front of Pictures, around 1910

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13. Polo, around 1910

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14. Longchamps, around 1912

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15. Evening on the Promenade, around 1912

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16. Escape from the Racecourse, around 1912

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17. Horse-Race (Goodwood), 1914

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18. At the Horse-Race, around 1912

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19. Company (At the Races), 1926

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20. Women with Unicorn, around 1912

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21. Yacht, around 1912

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22. The Queen of Sheba, 1913

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23. Luxuriating, around 1913

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24. Nude with Four-Poster, around 1912

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25. In a Turkish Way (Rococo ladies), 1914

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26. Sea scene, around 1920

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27. Zenobia, around 1923