Jenö Paizs Goebel

The Artwork of Jenö Paizs Goebel

Born at Budapest in June of 1896, Jenö Paizs Goebel was a Hungarian painter, a prominent representative of modern painting in the first half of the twentieth-century. Influenced by both Post-Impressionism and Surrealism, his works primarily contain lyrical abstraction, emotionally charged color, and a natural perspective.

Born Gőbel Jenő Dezső Gyula, Jenö Paizs Goebel was the son of Hungarian silk painter Mihály Gőbel and Tekla Piroska Liebmann. Beginning in 1915, he initially studied at the glass painting department of the Hungarian Royal National School of Arts and Crafts. Goebel continued his studies at Budapest’s Academy of Fine Arts from 1916 to 1924 under realist painter Tivadar Zemplényi and István Réti, plein-air painter and co-founder of the noted Nagybánya artists’ colony in Romania.

A talented artist in his early career, Goebel received a 1924 Nemes Marcell Scholarship from the Szinyei Pál Merse Society which enabled him to travel. He painted at the Nagybánya artist colony for six months, traveled to Paris where Goebel saw the works of Paul Cezanne and Giorgio de Chirico, and stayed for a period in the French commune of Barbizon where he studied the work of Hungarian Impressionist landscape painter László Paál. In 1925, Goebel was part of a group exhibition held at the Galerie Zodiaque in Paris; his work was also shown in the same year at Budapest’s Ernst Museum.

In 1926, Jenö Paizs Goebel painted in the riverside town of Szentendre and became one of the 1928 co-founders of its Painters Society. During this period in the late 1920s, his work was influenced by the paintings of impressionist László Paál and those of István Szőnyi, a fellow artist from the Nagybánya artist colony. Goebel adopted a painting style that utilized thin, flexible lines and enameled, clean surfaces. Works in this period included the 1926 “Self Portrait Leaning on a Table” and the 1927 “Saint Sebastian”, both now housed in the Hungarian National Gallery. Goebel received a silver medal for the works he exhibited at the 1929 Barcelona World Exhibition.

A significant change occurred in Goebel’s artwork in the early 1930s. The former enameled effect with its contrasting light and shadow was replaced with a decorative, carefully edited style. Now aligned with international Surrealism, he created compositions of myth and magic that contained symbolic elements within metaphysical spaces. The colors and decorative elements of the paintings evoke the techniques Goebel acquired as a glass painter. These dream-realm images, often depicting thick vegetation, can be interpreted as a visual refuge from the rising specter of upcoming war in Europe. Among the works created in this period was Goebel’s best known work, the 1931 “The Golden Age: Self-Portrait with Pigeons”.

After the first half of the 1930s, Jenö Paizs Goebel’s style changed again. The fantastic elements of his former work were absent; his style had become more relaxed with lighter atmospheric effects. Most of his work’s themes were now centered on life in Szentendre where he would live until his death. Simple rural motifs, scenes of local circuses, and self-portraits became the focus of Goebel’s paintings. These cheerful, finely-nuanced works, fashioned with delicate brushstrokes, were shown in a 1943 group exhibition at the local art center, Alkotás Művészház.

Jenö Paizs Goebel died at the age of forty-eight in Budapest on the twenty-third of November in 1944. Retrospectives of his work have been held over the years at the Budapest Art Gallery, the Hungarian National Gallery, the Szentendre Art Gallery, the Ferenczy Museum, and the Budapest History Museum. Goebel’s work can be found in many private collections and such public collections as the Janus Pannonius Museum, Hungarian National Gallery and the Ferenczy Museum.

Notes: Fine Arts in Hungary has a short article on Jenö Paizs Goebel’s “The Golden Age” on its website: https://www.hung-art.hu/frames-e.html?/english/p/paizs_go/muvek/paizsg07.html

Top Insert Image: Jenö Paizs Goebel, “Self Portrait”, 1938, Oil, Tempera on Wood, 44 x 31.5 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Jenö Paizs Goebel, “Parisian Studio Still Life with Mirror”, 1945, Watercolor on Paper, 60 x 45 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Jenö Paizs Goebel, “In the Garden”, 1943, Oil on Wood, 75.5 x 67 cm, Private Collection

Károly Kernstok

The Artwork of Károly Kernstok

Born in Budapest in December of 1873, Károly Kernstok was a Hungarian painter and a leading member of Á Nyolcak (The Eight). “The Eight” was an avant-garde art movement of Hungarian painters who were active in Budapest between 1909 and 1918. This group of artists, connected to the Post-Impressionist movement, were advocates of the rise of Modernism in all aspects of the arts.

In 1892 at the age of nineteen, Kernstok traveled to Berlin where he studied under Hungarian painter and educator Simon Hollósy, one of the prominent representatives of Hungarian Naturalism and Realism. After a year’s study with Hollósy, Kernstok studied at the Académie Julian in Paris from 1893 to 1896. He returned to Hungary in 1897 and painted his “Haulers” and “Agitátor”, an early composition with socialist undertones. Kernstok was awarded a bronze medal for a painting exhibited at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. In 1901, he exhibited at the International Exposition of Art of the City of Venice and the Venice Biennale.

After inheriting an estate in 1905 in the Central Transdanubia town of Nyergesújfalu, Károly Kernstok became a prominent leader of the “Neos”, a radical group of artists who rejected the naturalism promoted by the Nagybánya artists’ colony that was mainly composed of plein-air painters from Hollósy’s Free School in Munich. Although some of the Neo artists had studied briefly at the Nagybánya colony, the group was heavily influenced by French Post-Impressionist painters such as Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse. During the 1930s, Kernstok would establish an art school in the Nyergesújfalu region of Hungary.

Kernstok returned to Paris in 1906 where he became notably influenced by the works of Henri Matisse who, along with painter André Durain, was considered a leading proponent of Fauvism at the time. Kernstok’s style changed; he began to paint large-scale decorative compositions and stylized scenes that emphasized forms and lines. The rhythmic forms and strong contrasting colors of Kernstok’s 1910 “Riders on the Shore”, characterized by a synthesis of Post-Impressionism and Expressionism, shows Matisse’s strong Fauvist influence. A year later in 1911, he painted “Male Nude Leaning Against a Tree”, another example of Fauvism’s brilliant colors in figure and landscape.

After his return to Hungary, Károly Kernstok became an influence on the art group known as “The Eight”. Although a short-lived movement lasting only nine years from 1909 to 1918, the group consisted of major Hungarian artists, writers and composers. Its complex style encompassed the rationalism of Cubism, the decorative use of strong colors from Fauvism, and the depth of emotion found in German Expressionist works. Among those associated with the “The Eight” were painters Lajos Tihanyi and Róbert Berény, sculptors Vilmos Fémes Beck and Márk Vedres, writer and poet Endre Ady, and composer Béla Bartók. During his period with “The Eight”, Kernstok painted major frescoes and designed glass windows in 1911 for the Schiffer Villa and the County Hall of Debrecen, the second-largest city in Hungary.

In August of 1919, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, a short-lived communist state that lasted only one hundred thirty-three days, collapsed after its failure to reach an agreement with the Triple Entente which consisted of the French Third Republic, the Russian Empire and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. As a result, many artists including Kernstok emigrated to Berlin where they lived and worked. Influenced by Germany’s artistic trends, Kernstok painted a series of natural landscapes and a 1921 expressionist scene of “The Last Supper”.

In 1926, Károly Kernstok returned to Budapest and remained there for the rest of his life. He developed in his later years an interest in Etruscan frescoes and that culture’s use of mythological scenes and chiaroscuro. Kernstock produced graphic works that included etchings and drypoint engravings on copper, among which is his 1932 “Flowering Desert”. Among the paintings he executed are the 1933 “The Rape of Saint Helen” and the 1934 “Burial”. His lectures and the articles on art published in newspapers and art journals greatly extended his influence among the Hungarian painters.

After a long career of group shows and exhibitions at major Hungarian museums, Károly Kernstok died in June of 1940 in his home city of Budapest. His work is held in many private collections and public institutions, most notably the Hungarian National Gallery at Buda Castle in Budapest and the MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art in Debrecen. A major retrospective of Kernstok’s work was held at Budapest’s Metropolitan Centre for Popular Culture in 1951. Due to the rising interest in the early Modernism, major exhibitions of works by the early Hungarian modernists, especially those executed by “The Eight”, were held in 2010-2011 at the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs, Hungary, and at the 2012 Bank Austria Art Forum in Vienna, a collaboration between Vienna’s Museum of Art and the Hungarian National Gallery.

Top Insert Image: Károly Kernstok, “Önarckép (Self Portrait)”, 1903, Oil on Panel, 52 x 41.5 cm, Private Collection

Second Inset Image: Károly Kernstok, “Riders on the Shore”, 1910, Oil on Canvas, 214 x 292.5 cm, Hungarian National Gallery

Third Insert Image: André Kertész, “Károly Kernsstok’s Studio, Berlin”, 1925, Gelatin Silver Print, 6.8 x 7.8 cm, Art Institute of Chicago

Bottom Insert Image: Károly Kernstok, “Önarckép (Self Portrait in White Hat)”, circa 1900, Oil on Canvas, 80 x 60 cm, Hungarian National Gallery

William Orpen

William Orpen, “Self Portrait on Cliff Top in Howth”, cica 1910, Black Charcoal and Gouache, 50.5 x 36.5 cm, Private Collection

Born in County Dublin in November of 1878, William Newenham Montague Orpen was an Irish draftsman and portrait painter of London’s wealthy Edwardian society. A talented figure of British-Irish Post-Impressionism, he was the youngest son of wealthy, amateur painters and a gifted student who learned rapidly from a succession of celebrated tutors.

William Orpen was enrolled at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art in 1891, where he studied from 1892 to 1896. He continued his studies at London’s Slade School of Art between 1897 and 1899, under figurative painter Henry Tonks, landscape painter Philip Wilson Steer, and genre and portrait painter Frederick Brown. Having mastered oil painting and different painting techniques, Orpen’s work, during his six years of study, received many prizes including the British Isles gold medal for life drawing.

Upon graduation from the Slade School, Orpen, along with his fellow graduate, Welsh painter Augustus John, opened in the autumn of 1903, the Chelsea Art School, a private teaching studio, near King’s Road in Chelsea. Although it was meant as a joint venture, most of the teaching and running of the school was undertaken by John, with Orpen’s chief contribution being a series of lectures on anatomy. Both male and female students were admitted to the school but, despite John’s own bohemian lifestyle, the sexes were segregated for the Life classes. The project was not a success, and, after the waning of both’s interest, the school closed in 1907.

From 1902 to 1915, William Orpen, in addition to his classes at the Chelsea School, taught at the Dublin Metropolitan School of At, where his pupils included portrait painter Margaret Clarke, romantic-realist painter John Keating, and cartoonist Grace Gifford. In the summer of 1904, he and his friend and mentor, the gallery director and art dealer Hugh Lane, traveled to Paris and Madrid. Orpen guided Lane on the purchase of Impressionist works, and Lane, several years later, commissioned Orpen for a portrait series of notable Irish figures to be displayed at Dublin’s Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. In 1908, Orpen began exhibiting his work regularly at London’s Royal Academy; the work in this period was done in a distinctive open-air style that featured figures composed of touches of color.

Starting in 1912, Orpen began his successful career as a portrait painter with a series of portraits of his favorite model, Vera Brewster Hone, the wife of writer Joseph Hone. This series, of such quantity that Orpen numbered them instead of naming them, included the 1912 “The Angler” and the 1918 “The Roscommon Dragoon”, which portrayed Vera Brewster wearing a Dragoon uniform. With the support of painter John Singer Sargent, Orpen built a reputation, in both Dublin and London, as a fashionable portrait painter who presented his subjects in a traditional, polished style. He also painted several group portraits, a popular genre at the time, which include the 1912 “The Cafe Royal in London”, depicting Orpen and Augustus John, and the 1909 “Homage to Manet”, with the subjects, including Hugh Lane and Henry Tonks, assembled before Manet’s portrait of Eva Gonzales.

In December of 1915, as World War One commenced, William Orpen was commissioned into the Army Service Corps. In January of 1917, through connections with the senior ranks of the British Army, he was given the title of an official artist, which included a promotion to major and unrestricted access to the Front areas in France. Throughout the war years, Orpen painted battle locations, trench scenes, and many portraits of both enlisted men and officers. For his work in this period, he stopped using half-tones and half-shades and adopted a new palettes of colors, with weak purples, bright greens, and large white spaces of sunlight. Many of these war artist works are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London.

Both before and after the war, Orpen produced a number of realistic self-portraits. in which he used his skills as a draftsman to resolve the challenges of surface, lighting, and reflection that he set for himself. His 1910 “Myself and Cupid” was actually a painting within a painting; in this portrait, Orpen painted a table top beyond which was hung a portrait of himself sitting next to a statue of Cupid. Orpen’s 1910 self portrait, known as “Leading the Life in the West”, shows him reflected full-length in a mirror in his studio, wearing a bowler hat and holding gloves and a riding crop. An IOU note is tucked in the frame of the mirror, a testament to the pleasures and distractions of his early career. In Orpen’s 1917 self-portrait “Ready to Start”, painted shortly after his arrival in France, Orpen is inspecting himself in the mirror wearing his military uniform. The French postcards and papers on the desk in the foreground set the scene of wartime France, while the bottles of wine and spirits reference Orpen’s dependence on alcohol during the war.

William Orpen’s life after the war was never the same: he became an alcoholic, grew distant from his wife and family, and mostly painted only to support the lavish lifestyle he took up in Paris with his mistress. Despite his personal problems he was still successful and continued to exhibit widely. Orpen was made a member of the prestigious Royal Academy in 1921 and, in 1923, he received a commission to paint a portrait of Edward, Prince of Wales, for the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. In 1927 he was commissioned for a portrait of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, which was posthumously entered into the National Portrait Gallery. Orpen’s work was also part of the painting event at the 1926 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam.

Orpen became seriously ill in May of 1931, and , after a period of alcohol-induced illness and memory loss, died in London, at the age of fifty-two, in September of 1931. His contribution to the teaching of Irish art has always been recognized as he helped to nurture and influence Ireland’s most important painters of the twentieth-century.William Orpen is buried at Putney Vale Cemetery in southwestern London; a commemorative stone is located in the Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines, Belgium.

Insert Images Top to Bottom:

William Orpen, Self Portrait, 1913, Oil on Canvas, 122.9 x 89.9 cm, Saint Louis Art Museum

Sir William Orpen, “Self Portrait”, circa 1901, Colored Chalk on Dark Gray Paper, 15.5 x 10.9 cm, Private Collection

William Orpen, “Self Portrait (Ready to Start)”, 1917, Oil on Panel, 60.8 x 49.4 cm, Imperial War Museum, London