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Dimensions: measurements 37 1/2 by 56 1/8 in. alternate measurements 95.3 by 142.6 cm

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Provenance: Galerie Sedelmeyer, Paris
Estate of Emil Kiss (bequeathed to the present owner, 1936)

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Notes: PROPERTY FROM THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS
Mihály Munkácsy was the pre-eminent Hungarian painter of the 19υth century. Orphaned at a young age, Munkácsy was sent to live with his uncle, a retired lawyer who encouraged the boy's precocious artistic talent. At the age of 19, after learning the joiner's trade, Munkácsy moved to Pest, which at the time was a budding cultural center. He formed many friendships with other artists in the Hungarian city, and was encouraged to enroll at the Academy in Vienna to continue his training. Following Vienna, he, like many of his contemporaries, spent a brief period at the prestigious Munich Academy. After only two years, Munkácsy entered the Dusseldorf Academy where he was greatly influenced by the German painter Ludwig Knaus. From Knaus's instruction, he not only learned great draughtsmanship, structure and form, but also adopted the technique of applying a bituminized base to his canvases. Painting directly onto a base of black paint and building the composition with additional layers of color produced an extraordinary juxtaposition of dark and light tones. This dramatic technique is a true hallmark of Munkácsy's work and is evident in Woodland Interior. In 1872, Munkácsy and his new wife, a recently widowed baroness, moved to Paris, where he spent the remainder of his career, becoming one of the most beloved and sought-after artists of his time. The Sedelmeyer label on the reverse of Woodland Interior refers to influential art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer, with whom Munkácsy signed a lucrative ten-year contract in 1878. Sedelmeyer began his career a specialist in Dutch painting but eventually promoted the top artists from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Munkácsy's relationship with Sedelmeyer propelled him into a prolific period in his career - his output from the late 1870s and 1880s is today recognized as his most successful. Andras Szekely writes: "The warm greenish-brown, Barbizonian landscapes, the genre paintings of the seventies and the shining vedutas [sic] of the 1880s are real masterpieces" (Mihály Munkácsy, 1980, p. 9).