RIPPL-RÓNAI József
Kaposvár, 1861 – Kaposvár, 1927

Mrs Miksa Schiffer with her Daughters (Panneau of the Schiffer Villa), 1911

József Rippl-Rónai’s enormous panneau – together with other paintings by Béla Iványi Grünwald, István Csók and Károly Kernstok – was made to decorate the villa built for Miksa Schiffer in Budapest, designed in a late Secessionist style by József Vágó. This work was hung above the settee in the lounge alcove of the grand salon. The grey squares in the bottom corners show where the work was covered up by glass cabinets on either side.
The painting shows Mrs Miksa Schiffer and her daughters in the grounds of the family mansion in Nagyszentmiklós (Sânnicolau Mare). The composition – the female figures lined up in the foreground with the path running perpendicularly across the background in both directions – was also used in other works by Rippl-Rónai. A similar arrangement can be seen in the studies the artist made for the stained-glass window of the Ernst Museum, and also in the painting that was acquired by the Musée d’Orsay in 2012, which is now on permanent display in the Parisian museum. In this characteristic, “corn-style” painting, brightly coloured brush strokes are placed side by side to construct magnified mosaics. Rippl-Rónai’s decorative principles were well suited to more expansive surfaces, and in this work they had the freedom to take full flight.