PAÁL, László

Hungarian painter, an outstanding figure of Hungarian realist landscape painting. Mihály Munkácsy convinced him to take up painting, and in 1864 Paál enrolled in the Academy in Vienna. His trip to Holland in 1870 had a major impact on his career: the example of Dutch landscape painting liberated his propensity for colours. In 1872 be travelled to France and settled in Barbizon.

He painted nothing but landscapes - this genreGLOSSARYIn a broad sense, the term is used to mean a particular branch or category of art; landscape and portraiture, for example, are genres of painting, and the essay and the short story are genres of literature. became the sole manifestation of his feelings, moods, and ideas. RealismGLOSSARYRealism (with an upper case "R"), also known as the Realist school, denotes a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace subjects. One of the main representatives and spokesmen was the painter Gustave Courbet. In the dispute about ways to represent reality, Realism rebelled against the idealistic and classicist tendencies in painting. was combined with a lyrical, sometimes even romantic approach in his pictures. Trails in the woods, small clearings, the depth of the forest - his favourite themes - are depicted sometimes light-heartedly, and other times with somber colours (e.g. In the Forest of Fontainebleau). As a result of his sensitivity and tense disposition, some of his paintings were more dramatic or more melancholic (e.g. Frog Swamp). His pictures are exquisite achievements of Lyrical realism: his oeuvreGLOSSARYThe complete body of works created by an artist. is related to the tendencies of Barbizon SchoolGLOSSARYA group of naturalist landscape painters who worked in the vicinity of Barbizon, a village on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleu, southeast of Paris, in the 1840s and 1850s. Théodore Rousseau (French, 1812-1867) was the founder of the group. Other members of the group were Jean-Baptist Corot (French, 1796-1875), Narcisse Diaz de la Pena (French, 1807-1876), Constant Troyon (French, 1810-1865), Jules Dupré (French, 1811-1889), Jean-François Millet (French, 1814-1875), and Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817-1878). Their approach constituted an art movement which eventually led to both Realism and Impressionism. Daubigny was the first of the plein air painters..