Arts and Crafts influences within Britain, Hungary and Poland

Several exhibitions this autumn explore the unexpected example of cultural exchange between Britain, Hungary and Poland through the influence of John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

The Beauty of Utopia. Pre-Raphaelite influences in the Art of Turn-of-the-century Hungary at the Hungarian National Gallery is a complement to Desired Beauty, their exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate Collection. Art in nineteenth-century Hungary was primarily shaped by Austrian, German, and French influences. However, the British-Hungarian relations that developed at the turn of the century facilitated the productive effect of Pre-Raphaelite art, the Arts and Crafts movement and numerous English artists on Hungarian literature, fine and applied arts as well as in architecture. The most notable influence of the Pre-Raphaelites was manifest in the ars poetica of the Gödöllő artists’ colony and the early period of Lajos Gulácsy’s oeuvre, but other Hungarian artists also drew inspiration from their English contemporaries.

The exhibition documents the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites in Hungary in four thematic groups: the works made by the Gödöllő artists’ colony, the paintings of Lajos Gulácsy’s “Pre-Raphaelite period”, the English influences in Hungarian art at the turn of the century, and also Pre-Raphaelite prints and drawings that are of major significance in the history of the museum’s collection, including pieces by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and Walter Crane.

Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch founded the Tolstoyan, Symbolist – Art Nouveau artist colony in 1901, after settling in Gödöllő. The art theoretical writings of the art critic John Ruskin, who was of great importance for the Pre-Raphaelites, also fundamentally shaped the ars poetica of Körösfői, and his book on Ruskin and the English Pre-Raphaelites was published in Budapest in 1905. Laura Kriesch (Mrs Sándor Nagy), Leo Belmonte, Rezső Mihály, Árpád Juhász, István Zichy, Ödön Moiret, Jenő Remsey, Tom von Dreger, Ede Wigand Toroczkai, Ferenc Sidló and Mariska Undi were among the members.

The oeuvre of the Gödöllő artists’ colony is also presented with its antecedents harking back to the romantic historicism of the English Pre-Raphaelites, as well as to the work of William Morris, who revived handicraft traditions and initiated the Arts and Crafts movement, and also in the art and activity of Walter Crane. In the spirit of all the artistic aspirations of the period, works were made in many branches of fine and applied arts in Gödöllő: paintings, murals, graphics, sculptures, furniture, embroidery, textiles, tapestries, glass windows, costume designs, book illustrations and art books.

Lajos Gulácsy spent most of his narrow creative years, almost a decade and a half, in Italy. During this time, he lived and worked in numerous Italian cities. Moving away from space and time, he created a unique literary and pictorial atmosphere. The subject of his admiration between 1903 and 1908 was primarily early Renaissance painters; Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi and Botticelli, and Dante’s writings, artists who previously had a great influence on the English Pre-Raphaelites. In Italy, at the turn of the century, the Pre-Raphaelite artists had been worshipped, so Gulácsy could have been influenced simultaneously by the paintings of Rossetti and Burne-Jones, as well as the original Italian works that inspired the British artists.

The inspiring knowledge, as well as a kinship in style, subjects, and motifs with English art, can be presumed in the case of a great many Hungarian artists. These connections are demonstrated at the exhibition through works by József Rippl-Rónai, Károly Ferenczy, Ferenc Helbing, Ferenc Paczka, Aladár Kacziány, Lajos Kozma and Attila Sassy.

The prints of Rossetti and his pupil, Burne-Jones, were donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1934 as outstanding pieces of Pál Majovszky’s large-scale collection of drawings.

By the turn of the century, like in other European countries, the art of the island country had become popular in Hungary. The English connection of the Hungarian art scene is reflected in Walter Crane’s exhibition in 1900 at the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest. In Hungary, a real cult developed around the artist at that time, for the reason that Crane, like the group of artists organised around Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch, encouraged the discovery of folk art motifs. Numerous works by Crane from this exhibition got into the collection of museums; many of his graphic works have enriched the British material of the Museum of Fine Arts. And of particular interest, our exhibition also includes the masterpiece by the English artist, entitled Abduction of Europa (1881), which entered the collection of the Hungarian National Bank in 2020 from a private collection in Hungary.

Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (1890 – 1918) at the William Morris Gallery from October is the first major exhibition to explore the decorative arts and architecture of Young Poland (Młoda Polska), an extraordinary cultural movement that flourished in response to Poland’s invasion and occupation by foreign powers.

Originating in Kraków and the nearby village of Zakopane at the foot of the Tatra Mountains, Young Poland sought inspiration in local folk traditions, wildlife and craftsmanship while collapsing the distinction between the fine and applied arts. Developing themes explored in a critically acclaimed book by its curators (Lund Humphries, 2020), the exhibition is the first in the world to position Young Poland as an Arts & Crafts movement, revealing strong stylistic and philosophical affinities with the work of William Morris and John Ruskin.

While the diverse visual language of Young Poland was created autonomously, in search of a distinctive cultural style and identity, it simultaneously looked outwards to the rest of Europe including Britain. The exhibition explores unexpected examples of cultural exchange between both nations: for instance in 1848 the members of the newly-founded Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood included the Polish fighter for freedom, Tadeusz Kościuszko, on their list of ‘Immortals’ (inspirational heroes). While Stanisław Witkiewicz developed the Zakopane Style—which draws on the vernacular traditions of the Tatras—before he became aware of Ruskin and Morris, he later said that he had unknowingly fulfilled the theories of these British reformers.

From furniture to Christmas decorations, intricate textiles to delicate paper cuttings, this landmark survey spans five galleries and brings together over 150 works, most of which have never travelled outside of Poland. Young Poland: An Arts and Crafts Movement (1890 – 1918) examines the ideas that propelled the movement and introduces the artists, designers and craftspeople whose decorative schemes and objects came to define it.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Józef Czajkowski, Zdzisław Gedliczka, Wojciech Jastrzębowski, Karol Kłosowski, Józefa Kogut, Bonawentura Lenart, Jacek Malczewski, Jan Matejko, Józef Mehoffer, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Henryk Uziembło, Stanisław Wyspiański and Stanisław Witkiewicz.

Influences between Hungarian and Polish art, as well as that of Austria, Czech, and Croatian painting, were explored in 2017 in The First Golden Age: Painting in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Műcsarnok, an exhibition for the 120th anniversary of the Műcsarnok in Budapest. The Hungarian Review has an extensive article that also explores these influences in the light of the 2017 exhibition.

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Bela Bartok - Hungarian Sketches.