On the Zala County Side of Lake Balaton

Like Géza Mészöly and József Egry, Sándor Brodszky was a lover of natural water, especially of Lake Balaton. Further, he was not unlike Mészöly in that painting was not his first choice for a career; he originally studied to be a physician. He learned the trade in Vienna and Munich, and studied the land in Tirol and Switzerland. His style and the way he used highlights are akin to Ligeti’s solutions, while his precision and compositional devices join him with the Markó school. In turn, his clouds and skies make him a late heir of classicist landscape painting and of Pierre-Henri de Valeciennes. When he saw the piece at the 1888 autumn salon, Emperor Franz Josef bought it for his own private collection. After the imperial collection was dispersed, the whereabouts of the picture was unknown for almost a century, before it was obtained by the Gábor Kovács Collection.