Ferenczy Károly kettős portréja Schönherr Antalról és Schönherr Gyuláról (1902)

Abstract

In the autumn of 1902 Károly Ferenczy (1862–1917) painted a double portrait of Gyula Schönherr (1864–1908) and his father Antal Schönherr (†1905) in Nagybánya (today Baia Mare, Romania). Antal Schönherr was the police chief of the town, but his son had long been living in Budapest and pursued a serious career as a historian. After the onset of his career in the Archives of the Hungarian National Museum, he edited the periodical Turul rallying heraldic research, the periodical of book historical research Magyar Könyvszemle, the volumes of the Millennial Hungarian History, and he became the secretary of the National Inspectorate of Museums and Libraries set up in 1897. In 1896, at the age of 32, he became corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He supported the art colony of Nagybánya from its foundation. Károly Ferenczy was a friend of the Schönherr family in Nagybánya; he painted the double portrait as a present to Gyula Schönherr. Gyula Schönherr’s unpublished letters to his family reveal the process of portraiture (with references to the creative methods of the painter), the display and reception of the portrait in Budapest and its subsequent fate, the further contacts between Ferenczy and his painter friends and the Schönherr family. After Gyula Schönherr’s death the painting remained with the family, who donated it to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1926, since when it has been in public collections.