Rembrandt drawings chained to the wrist and under her head

In its series recalling former memorable exhibitions MuzeumCafé talks to Klára Garas who has been connected with the Fine Arts Museum for nearly 90 years. Remembered in relation to many exhibitions, she began as a trainee and later became a curator and director of the museum. She was centrally active to the political changes of 1989-90. Old Hungarian Masters is her special field but she has written studies about the museum’s other art treasures and foreign artists working in Hungary. As for exhibitions, she says financial and technical matters made her job difficult, rather than political pressure. Taking works of art abroad has always caused concern, whether they are transported under up-to-date conditions or taken on the train chained to the wrist – as she did with two Rembrandt drawings.

– Photographs show that after the war parts of the Fine Arts Museum could not be used for some time.

– Yes, and the Roman Hall still can’t be. Even when the sound of warfare could still be heard in Buda we removed a horse from the Roman Hall. It had been carried in to be eaten by the office clerks living in the building. I was much disgusted by the carcass, but it was my task. There is a famous photo of us shovelling snow in the museum. That was quite usual at the time.

– The collection was also in disarray, in unknown places.

– Everything that was valuable was taken. A part was brought back from Germany on the ‘gold train’. We had to certify that each work was ours, that it belonged to the Fine Arts Museum. I still have a newspaper cutting with a photograph showing us unpacking a Raphael from a trashy box. Those boxes represented a large proportion of Hungary’s wealth at the time. It is less known that before these works reappeared, someone announced that pictures were lying in the snow at Szentgotthárd. They had been unloaded from a train which was stopped by armed men, thus it couldn’t continue. Dénes Radocsay went to identify the works of art, for example the great Tiepolo, which was under restoration for a long time afterwards. The time spent in the snow certainly didn’t do it much good.

– When did you start in the museum?

– On 1 February 1945, when the war was still on. After the collection had been more or less assembled we opened the first exhibition in winter 1946.

– Interestingly, you didn’t exhibit the museum’s treasures but others from private collections. Why was that?

– We wanted to know and especially have records of what remained in the country. There are only a few illustrations but a representative list clearly shows what selection we were able to compile at that time. Later we purchased many items or they were donated to the museum, yet a part still remains in private hands. The exhibition was Andor Pigler’s initiative. Together we examined the collections and the pictures were displayed in the rooms by the building’s façade. Don’t forget that at the time people may not have found their personal belongings and we wanted to see their art collections. It was when laws on art protection were adopted, which included private collections, with the aim of assessing and recording the art treasures remaining in the country. … During those chaotic times quite astounding things happened. I remember a well-known Goya painting which was waiting for its fate propped up by a column in the library, then a Herzog inheritor simply walked away with it. It’s a noted work of art and has been abroad ever since. This was characteristic of Europe as a whole. Every country was fighting to rescue their art treasures. Art collector Imre Oltványi as the president of the Hungarian National Bank right after the war made it possible to purchase some very important paintings. But there were more spicy stories, too. A young man turned up in the museum directly after the war saying he seemed to recognize Courbet’s The Wrestlers in a painting lying in a Buda villa where his family had lived and wanted to move back in. A bit doubtful, we went there and the painting really was lying on the floor. The Germans wanted to take it but it was too large and didn’t fit in their car. They were in a hurry so left it there. It was returned to the Hatvanys who sold it to the museum.

– Who were you in contact with among the prominent collectors?

– Many of the pre-war collectors were still alive. I remember Pál Fabó and also the Hatvany and Herzog inheritors well. Soon after I met one of the Hatvanys in London where we held an exhibition. They were troubled times. An unknown man appeared saying he had bought a painting at the Teleki Square market. It was a Delacroix and it’s still here in the museum. God only knows how he got it and where the previous owner had obtained it. Much was moved around in those years. )

– Who went to see an exhibition in the ruined city of 1946?

– It’s a very interesting question. Not many specialists are concerned with the issue of museums and visitors, though it’s an exciting field. There was less entertainment for people, so going to museums was obvious. As a young member of staff I had to guide quite a few groups, including members of agricultural cooperatives, and I was surprised how well-informed people were who you would least expect. Then everyone would still know that the baby in the foreground of a painting was little Jesus. Today it is no longer obvious. Images must be explained much more to visitors, they are not familiar even with the most basic iconography.

– You rearranged the Old Masters in 1948.

– We had to take into account that of the two main staircases the stairs on the left had fallen in and only those on the right could be used, although the other was soon repaired. The first renovation of the building was completed then as the first phase of reconstruction after the war.
I recall going up to the roof from where the whole city could be seen. The most important works of the Old Masters could be displayed except for those requiring more expensive and lengthier restoration. Yet there were works of art in the storeroom which had not been identified for decades. At one point Andor Pigler took note of a work in which I saw nothing interesting, but he just kept looking and discovered that Lorenzo Lotto’s famous and today exhibited picture, Apollo and the Muses, was behind the brown smudging. Not long after he wrote about it in a noted Italian journal. We could soon join in the international circuit and for the profession abroad it was also important to have the Fine Arts Museum’s collection exist, since undoubtedly it is a very significant European art collection.

– At that time the collection still included Hungarian art from 1800 to today.

– The problem of storing and exhibiting was there from the beginning. I recall the times when some of the paintings were displayed in the Old Palace of Arts on Andrássy Avenue and the Municipal Picture Gallery in the Károlyi Palace still functioned with a separate director and a fine collection. … It was different with old Hungarian Masters, particularly because Dénes Csánky, the museum director during the war, was deeply involved with Hungarian painting of non-Hungarian areas, therefore those paintings otherwise in a very poor condition were held in the Museum of Fine Arts. …

– The collection of the Municipal Gallery was incorporated in the Museum of Fine Arts in 1953 and it enabled you to curate and hold the Jan Kupeczky exhibition.

– It was presented upstairs in 1954. I had been concerned with Kupeczky earlier, but that was his first solo exhibition in Hungary. The catalogue can still be found in a few second-hand bookshops, but the collection is scattered. We have some in the Fine Arts Museum and there are some in the Hungarian National Gallery. The majority were purchased by Counts Jenő and Ödön Zichy in Vienna from the 1860s since they regarded him a Hungarian artist. …

– How was he classified when the Hungarian and foreign collections were separated?

– That’s interesting. Most remained in this museum because the Czechs rightly regard Kupeczky as their own since he was, after all, of Czech origin. If you look at his career God only knows what nationality he was. He was born in Bazin, at the time in Hungarian territory, but he hardly lived there. He lived most his life in Nuremberg. It’s difficult to bind such artists to a nation, partly because they themselves did not do so and partly they were mobile, even with respect to religion. … The same can be said of Maulbertsch, the artist I researched the most. He himself was not concerned with the issue of being attached to a nationality and a nation.

– When the Hungarian collection was removed, the permanent exhibition must have been rearranged.

– The whole lot had to be rearranged, which provided the opportunity to modernise the exhibition rooms and change the heating and lighting. …

– To what extend did the politics of the 50s define exhibition concepts?

– Old Masters was our special field so we were affected less. There were some who represented both art and the political line, for example, Gyula Ortutay, the head of MUMOK (National Centre of Museums and Protected Monuments). The world was smaller and so was the profession. Don’t forget that a museum also served diplomatic aims. While foreign politicians were conducting negotiations in Hungary a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts was organised for their wives.
I myself guided Mrs Khrushchev. Foreign exhibitions attracted a huge number of visitors. I remember a Chinese exhibition and that of the Dresden Picture Gallery. It’s interesting how quickly international relations were re-established after the war in the arts far sooner than in other fields.

– How did you organise the museum’s first exhibition abroad after the war in London?

– I was entirely inexperienced. At the beginning of my career as an art historian I was appointed to organise the exhibition in London because I spoke English well. One of my helpers who I had to liaise with was Alexander Korda, a very influential person in Britain. I was waiting for him in a room, gaping the Canalettos on the wall. I clearly remember it was a dark place but the Canalettos shone. He was a collector and quite a good one at that. He said he didn’t have much time to help (while
I was there I was invited to several of his events and premiers), but his brother Vincent, a set designer, painter and also a collector, was pleased to be at my disposal. Vincent’s girlfriend took me to several places and they helped a lot by knowing who to invite to the exhibition. The event was held in the city centre and I was very proud of Budapest because London’s centre was in a far worse condition even years after the war. Provisions were not much better either – at home in Hungary we were at least sure of potatoes growing.

– How and what did you take to be exhibited?

– An exhibition started to be organised in Switzerland even during the war with the clear intention of rescuing works of art in a safe place. The recently deceased writer Miklós Hubay, who survived the war years in Switzerland, held paintings by Rippl-Rónai, Glatz and others. After the war it was suggested that those paintings be exhibited somewhere and they made up the exhibition in London with some additions from Budapest. We exhibited entirely modern Hungarian works.

– Let’s move to an exhibition you had researched for decades – the presentation of Franz Anton Maulbertsch in 1974.

– … During and after the war in my research I was making a card-index. I travelled, putting a bicycle on the train because there wasn’t much opportunity to get to places. I went by train between towns and by bike to locations which were difficult to reach otherwise. In 1954 I raised the question with colleagues in Vienna concerning their reaction if I immersed myself in the topic because the director of the Belvedere, who had been involved in it earlier, had died during the war. I was told to go ahead. I began going to places in Europe the artist had visited and in 1960 a Viennese publisher and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences jointly published the first monograph that I put together. There was quite a serious professional response since until then nothing was known about him, although his works could be seen in many places. They started to organise the exhibition in Vienna for the 250th anniversary of his birth and we were working in Budapest in parallel. It’s difficult to display Maulbertsch since he primarily painted frescos, therefore we presented mainly sketches, drawings and studies. … From then on Maulbertsch got to the forefront of international interest.

– You began research as a student and curated the exhibition as a director.

– Yes, I was appointed after Pigler in 1964 and I was director until 1984, up to the Raphael theft.
I anyway was about to resign, since at 65 I was well into retirement age and then that awful incident took place.

– How did the museum collection increase? As you already said, it did so relatively easily after the World War II., when many people wanted to get rid off their belongings. But later you had to compete on the market.

– At one time the collection increased by the reorganisation of museums … but we also had to purchase. We were able to buy many significant, valuable works at auctions held by BÁV, the only company that had them then, because we knew the works and artists better than non-professional buyers. … But we also bought paintings from private owners. For example, a painting was brought in that was thought to be by Poussin, but it was impossible to know for sure so it was lying about with different buyers and inheritors. However, we were sure without any documentation and bought it. Since then it can be proved with documents to be an early work by Poussin, which used to be part of a noted private collection in Budapest. If we had not been bold, buying it based on our intuition, then later when it was definitely proved to be a Poussin we could not have bought it at sky-high prices. This is the advantage of specialist knowledge.

– Were foreign exhibitions such as those of the Dresden Picture Gallery and the Pushkin Museum initiated by the Fine Arts Museum or did they represent a diplomatic task?

– They were mostly set up on the basis of professional contacts. In the 70s Budapest hosted a congress on art history and a participating French colleague suggested we hold an exhibition in Bordeaux, which took place a couple of years later. … It was one of the museum’s first large presentations abroad. Later we got to America and Japan, and we exchanged exhibitions with Vienna on several occasions. The transport of pictures caused much headache. Once I travelled to Holland on the train with two drawings by Rembrandt in a box under my head, chained to my wrist. I admit I was not very pleased.

– Was that the way of transporting works of art?

– There was no real alternative at the beginning of the 1950s. I travelled by train from Vienna to Prague – I had a separate compartment. I was met in Prague, taken to the embassy where the drawings were locked up until the plane’s departure. I was nervous all the time how I would know when I arrived in Amsterdam whether it was a crook or a robber who met me at the airport. Then when I arrived the entire Hungarian embassy and several colleagues from the receiving museum were there to meet me. Today the transport of works no longer happens in this way, but there is still anxiety since a work of art in transit is always in danger.

– You’ve mentioned Mrs Khrushchev, what other famous visitors do you remember?

– One day I was told that a foreign gentleman wanted some information. I went down and the writer Ilya Ehrenburg was standing there. Meeting him was one of my greatest experiences. We spent half a day together, he was an extremely and entertaining person. I started speaking to him in German because I knew that he wrote his early works in that language, but he asked me to speak in French. However, I had almost a friendly conversation with the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. He visited Budapest and managed to start his day early in the morning with the Greco exhibition.

– How did you get on with Mr Aczél?

– There were witnesses when we had a disagreement, but in the end he accepted what I said. A publisher complained about the museum so Aczél rang me up and demanded an explanation. I stood up for ourselves and he had to accept it. I was right, what should I do? It was not difficult to get on with them, they were not such frightful figures. One day a museum guard came running up to me saying he thought that a man in a trench coat who was looking around the graphic art collection was János Kádár. I went there and it really was him, completely on his own. He had sent out his attendant to have a cigarette. First he didn’t really see what I wanted of him, saying he was on holiday and had organised a private visit for himself. When I offered to take him to the picture gallery which at the time was closed for reorganisation he accepted it with pleasure. I was talking with him as with you now.

– How did you try to get hold of works by contemporary foreign artists?

– In the previous issue Krisztina Passuth spoke about the exhibition 20th-century Artists of Hungarian Origin Abroad. It was to be held in our museum but artists in Hungary stabbed it in the back because they didn’t want those few selected emigrant painters and sculptors to be exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts. That was when we got in contact with artists living abroad. We were very moved considering how many of them felt Hungarian, even after their disturbing experiences. They made donations and we were able to buy works from them, although not from the stars of the international art scene. Perhaps that is the weakness of the museum.