VASZARY János
Kaposvár, 1867 – Budapest, 1939

Breakfast in the Open Air, 1907

When János Vaszary returned to Hungary and settled down – as was the case with Rippl-Rónai – the newfound stability resulted in the emergence of new types of painting in his oeuvre. The painter created a magnificent series of works about his private life over the course of the two years following his wedding in 1905. The subjects of most of the paintings he produced at this time were ladies, children and townsfolk walking or lounging around in the open air. This almost petit-bourgeois idyll, however, was captured by the artist using such forceful Impressionism that the painterly power of his images, and the expressive momentum of the patches of pigment applied to the canvas, seem to shatter the peace and quiet that his themes might suggest. There is indeed no connection between the characters in this picture, neither in a narrative nor a compositional sense; very little physical integrity is maintained by the models, and even that is pulverised by the harshness of the sunlight.