Documents of János Tornyai (1869-1936)

János Tornyai (1869–1936) was an outstanding painter of the Hungarian Great Plains, an organizer of the Hódmezővásárhely artists’ group, and the establisher of the ethnographic and fine arts collection of the local municipal museum named after him.

Following Tornyai’s death in 1936, a significant portion of the paintings and documents he left behind disappeared.They were only found much later, after the passing of his widow in 1983, under the floorboards of the painter’s last studio in Horányszky Street, Budapest. The painting estate was shared between the János Tornyai Museum in Hódmezővásárhely and the Hungarian National Gallery, while the documents were transferred to the latter’s Archives and Documentation Collection.

The collection of documents left behind by János Tornyai offers a complex picture of his work as both a painter and a  public figure in artistic circles: it includes nearly ninety-five handwritten journals, along with nearly eighty letters written by him (mainly to his second wife) and 540 letters addressed to him. The correspondence clearly reveals Tornyai’s network of contacts, containing letters written to him by a number of prominent Hungarian artists (e.g. Jenő Barcsay, Mihály Munkácsy, József Rippl-Rónai, and Mihály Zichy), by some of his contemporaries from Hódmezővásárhely (Béla Endre, Mária Kovács, János Pásztor, and Gyula Rudnay), as well as by prominent art critics and writers (e.g. Ödön Gerő, Károly Lyka, to mention only a few). Additionally, this portion of the artist’s estate also includes press clippings, lists of artworks, exhibition lists, and catalogues, as well as medals and honorary certificates. Furthermore, a nearly 400-piece photograph collection comprises an especially valuable part of the material: it includes a large number of prototype photos, based on which the painter created his large-scale, multi-figure paintings. A significant portion of these photos were taken by his friend József Plohn (1869–1944), a prominent figure of Hungarian ethnographic photography.

The journals and correspondences discovered in 1984 were initially processed by the Tornyai’s first monographer, art historian and Hungarian National Gallery staff member Éva Bodnár, who published her findings in her 1986 volume entitled Tornyai Rediscovered. Her manuscripts and notes for the oeuvre catalogue, along with her documents relating to the transfer of the Tornyai estate, are also kept at the KEMKI ADK.

/Károly Tóth/