The Wandering Baron's Quality of Light

Light at Dawn - 1890

At the age of thirteen or fourteen, I briefly entertained notions of becoming a painter, but my utter lack of talent and skill quickly put those notions to rest. One thing I could never master when I dabbled around with painting as a teenager was light. Try as I might, I was utterly unsuccessful at bringing any realistic or even impressionistic sense of light to anything I attempted. It did not take me long to realize that evoking light in painting was no small feat.

One painter who, in my mind, succeeded in bringing a sublime quality of light to his paintings was the Hungarian painter László Mednyansky - (1852 - 1919).  

A curious personage in Hungarian art history, Mednyansky hailed from an aristocratic family based in what is today a part of Slovakia. Despite his background, Mednyansky spent the majority of his life traveling around Europe and working as artist. Surprisingly, he socialized with any and every class of people he encountered on his meanderings and spent long stretches living a solitary and somewhat secluded life. While viewing some of his works online, I came across a reference that claims he was occasionally referred to as "The Wandering Baron."

Sadly, I do not know much more about Laszló Medyansky at the moment, but I hope to learn more about him and his art this summer when I will hopefully have more free time to indulge in such pursuits. In the meantime, I invite you to view some of his works. The paintings I have included in the selection below exemplify Mednyansky's masterful ability to bring light onto a canvas. The sublimity with which he depicts light raises it to the level of the subject matter itself; in some cases, the light overpowers the landscapes and dominates the canvas to the point of transcendence. Truly splendorous stuff, in my humble opinion.