Saturday, April 21, 2012

Oriental Paintings by Hungarian Artist Gyula Tornai (1861 - 1928)

At the Shrine

An Arms Merchant in Tangiers 1890

The shisha smoker, 1903

The Duet

Portrait Of Jaroslava, The Artist’s Daughter

The Geisha House

Harem Lady

In The Harem

Nudes With Tortoise

Susanna And The Elders

Tattoo

The Magic Fountain

Gyula Tornai was born in 1861, and received his artistic education at the academies in Vienna, Munich and Budapest. He exhibited in London, Paris, Budapest and at the Salon in 1917. He began his career painting hugely popular genre scenes in the late 19th century, but after his travels to India, China, Japan and Morocco his themes changed to exotic places and the customs of those destinations. Tornai stayed in Tangier for a year and in 1900 he exhibited pictures in the Exposition Universelle in Paris to great acclaim, winning the bronze medal.

The complex nature of this painting shows the strong influence of the great Viennese master Hans Makart. Even the tonality demonstrates his aesthetic sway over Gyula Tornai, adding a unique art-historical dimension to this work. The ‘Makartstil’, which determined the culture of an entire era in Vienna, was an aestheticism the likes of which hadn’t been seen before. Called the ‘magician of colours’, he painted in brilliant hues and fluid forms, which placed the design and the aesthetic of the work before all else.

Source:
http://www.christies.com
http://conchigliadivenere.wordpress.com
http://www.classicartpaintings.com