Pál Szinyei Merse

In 1873 a young Hungarian nobleman finished a painting of friends lounging on a spring hillside, the women's dresses bright against the green, the light falling as if you could feel the warmth of the day. He called it Picnic in May. Working in Munich, far from Paris, Pál Szinyei Merse had arrived at more or less the same thing the French Impressionists were finding at that very moment, that sunlight breaks up form and shifts every colour. He reached it on his own, without knowing their work.

Hungary was not ready for it. The picture met indifference and some mockery, and the disappointment cut so deep that Szinyei put down his brushes for over a decade, retreating to his country estate to farm and raise a family.

Recognition came late. By the 1890s a younger generation had caught up with what he had done in 1873, and Picnic in May was hailed as one of the great Hungarian paintings. He ended his life as president of the Budapest art academy, championing the young open-air painters of the Nagybánya colony.