The Museum of Fine Arts honors Mihály Munkácsy, born 180 years ago, with a major exhibition that celebrates the entire career of the Hungarian painter, who achieved international fame in Paris.
The exhibition, which opened on November 27 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, features over a hundred works, including paintings, sketches, archival photographs, personal relics, and contemporary pieces by Munkácsy.
Titled “Munkácsy – The Story of a Global Success,” the exhibition spans six rooms, showcasing the painter’s most significant works. Iconic realist pieces like “The Gravedigger” and monumental works such as “Golgotha”, transported from Debrecen to the Szépművészeti Museum, are among the highlights.
In addition to guided tours, the exhibition explores Munkácsy’s stardom in his time while emphasizing that his success was not solely due to his artistic talent.
“Along with his extraordinary abilities, he needed patrons: his French wife, who introduced him to Parisian society, and the art dealer who inspired many of his themes,” said László Baán, General Director of the Hungarian National Gallery, in an interview with Euronews.
“For instance, it was Sedelmayer’s idea for him to depict the life of Jesus—not just any portrayal, but monumental works. These paintings were shown in traveling exhibitions across Europe and America, viewed by millions of people. This exposure brought him so many commissions that he became the most expensive artist of his era,” Baán added.
Munkácsy’s Monumental Exhibitions
Curator Réka Krasznai noted that securing works from private and public collections abroad posed significant challenges, particularly transporting the massive paintings “Golgotha” and “The Conquest of Hungary” from Debrecen and the Hungarian Parliament.
The exhibition also builds on the success of two previous major retrospectives: one held in 1952 at Műcsarnok and another in 2005 at the National Gallery.
“I aimed to combine the strengths of these past exhibitions to showcase Munkácsy’s entire body of work—from the grand pieces housed in the National Gallery to his monumental masterpieces and hidden gems from private collections,” Krasznai explained to Euronews.
The exhibition runs at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest until the end of March 2025.
