Pilgrimage to the Cedars of Lebanon

Tivadar Csontvary spent most of his working life behind a pharmacy counter in Hungary. By his own account he had a vision in his 20s telling him he would become a great painter, and eventually he gave up the pharmacy, taught himself, and travelled through the Middle East chasing subjects and sunlight. This huge canvas from 1907 shows the ancient cedars of Lebanon, trees long loaded with meaning as symbols of life and endurance, painted in strange saturated colour with small figures and horses gathered under one enormous tree. Almost no one took him seriously while he lived, and he died in 1919 poor and largely unknown. Today Hungarians count this among the treasures of their national painting, hung in the gallery inside the royal castle in Budapest.