Documents of the National Picture Gallery (Országos Képtár)

In 1977, some important documents of the National Picture Gallery were inventoried in the Data Repository of the Hungarian National Gallery's as “core material” (material that had been there for a long time). They reveal interesting details about the life and times of the first Hungarian public museum, such as, for instance, what paintings were acquired and how; what rules the institution had; who the staff were; what was restored and how.

Copying diaries from 1844 to 1869 are also regarded as important documents; they record which paintings were copied by who and when. As there was no academy of fine arts in Hungary in the nineteenth century, one of the basic tasks of the Hungarian National Museum was to provide artists with opportunities to copy the paintings in the Picture Gallery as a means of practicing and developing their skills. This was useful not only for the artists, but also for the museum, as the end result became a market commodity and also, in a way, an advertisement for the works held at the National Picture Gallery.

In addition, a bundle of nearly fifty documents has recently been recovered, which contains official copies of registered documents from the 1860s to the 1890s, including acquisition documents, minutes of meetings, and various statements. The value of these few boxes of papers considerably increased in value after most of the original documents of the Hungarian National Museum were destroyed in a fire that broke out in the archives in 1956. With the help of this recently uncovered material, clarification can be provided about numerous details from the first fifty years of the National Museum.

/Eszter Békefi/