MUNKÁCSY Mihály
(1844–1900)

PEACOCKS (LUNCHEON IN THE GARDEN)

1878
Oil on canvas
New York Historical Society, New York
Inv. no. S-116

Peacocks (Luncheon in the Garden) was the first bourgeois genre painting by Munkácsy in which he placed elegant figures in a natural setting – an amalgam of salon and landscape painting – and, furthermore, in the scene of “luncheon in the open air”, a theme that was particularly fashionable at the time. The painting was purchased first by the New York sugar magnate and philanthropist Robert L. Stuart (one of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History, and its president) for his extremely distinguished private collection on Fifth Avenue. From there, it was given by his widow, along with the rest of the Stuart collection, in 1892 to the Lenox Library (that is – just like the Milton – to the New York Public Library), before being transferred to the New York Historical Society, where it can be found today. Milton and Peacocks were among the first paintings sold to Americans by Sedelmeyer in the framework of his ten-year contract with Munkácsy.