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Gustav Magyar Mannheimer, Hungarian painter in Paris
(Budapest, 1859 – 1937)
Woman with Hat and Parasol
Circa 1885–1895
Oil on wooden panel
Dimensions: 16.3 × 10.8 cm
(With frame: 30.5 × 24.7 cm)
The scene immediately evokes late 19th-century Paris, at a moment when photography had already reshaped the way images were seen and composed. The hat, the parasol and the female figure captured from a lateral angle place the work firmly within a modern visual culture, attentive to the instant rather than to constructed poses.
The strong side view breaks any frontal balance. The composition, deliberately off-center and partially cropped, creates a sense of suspended movement and unpredictability, characteristic of a modern approach to reality conceived as a fragment.
Gustav Magyar Mannheimer was trained at the Academy of Budapest and later in Munich. In Vienna he worked under the influence of Hans Makart, collaborating on the decorations of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. In Paris he attended the Académie Julian, one of the most important institutions for foreign artists at the end of the 19th century, where masters such as Bouguereau, Lefebvre and Benjamin-Constant were teaching.
He was also one of the founders of the Circle of Hungarian Impressionist and Naturalist painters in Budapest, playing a key role in the renewal of Hungarian painting around 1900. His institutional recognition is confirmed by his regular participation in the Venice Biennale (1901, 1903, 1905, 1909, 1910, 1912, 1922, 1930, 1932). The official catalogue of the 1912 Venice Biennale records that an entire room of the Hungarian Pavilion was devoted to his work, attesting to his prominent international standing.
The clothing provides clear elements for dating: the rigid hat worn high and the dark parasol correspond to urban female fashion between 1885 and 1895.
The painting is executed on a thin wooden panel, probably cut from a paint box or cigar box lid, a common practice among artists working in Paris at the time. The beveled edge on the right side confirms the fragmentary nature of the support, fully consistent with an image conceived to capture a moment.
Signed lower right “MAGYAR MANNHEIMER.”
On the reverse, old handwritten French labels and collection numbers, including 973, accompanied by a star and the letters “E.P.”
Period frame with floral decoration, Jugendstil taste.
