Biography
Mihály Munkácsy was a Hungarian painter, an internationally recognized master of 19th-century Hungarian painting. He was born in Munkács on February 20, 1844, and his name until 1868 was Leó Lieb Mihály. He entered the Vienna Academy in 1865, and from 1866 he studied first at the academy in Munich, and then, after a trip to Paris, at a private school. He worked in Düsseldorf between 1868 and 1871, where he developed his unique bitumen-based painting technique. He lived in Paris from 1871, and his works were praised by French critics. In 1873, he painted in Barbizon with his childhood friend László Paál; he also met Millet in the artist colony. He was a romantic realist painter who always created works full of inventions. He was closely associated with the realistic depiction represented by Gustave Courbet.
After his marriage, a turning point occurred in his art; the celebrated painter, whose importance and artistic achievement were already compared to that of Ferenc Liszt, signed a contract with the art dealer Hans Sedelmayer. Around 1876, he began a series of salon paintings depicting the brilliant and intimate scenes of representative high society. His landscape style was perfected in the 1880s. His Parisian school-studio was visited by Hungarian, German and American students between 1877 and 1880. In 1882, he founded a prize to provide further training for young artists in Paris.
In 1884, he created the panel entitled The Apotheosis of the Renaissance, which serves as the ceiling painting of the staircase of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. His works with historical themes include The Conquest of the Land, completed in 1894 for the Hungarian Parliament under construction.