I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION
This book, the second part of a survey of Budapest cityscape iconography, covers city views (vedutas) made and published, either independently or as illustrations, between 1800 and 1870.
These images serve as visual documents of local history, particularly as regards buildings and components of the urban landscape like streets and squares. They do not include images applied to craft works or purely decorative images. The former include the popular plates, cups and glasses from the 1820-1850 period decorated with painted adaptations of vedutas, and thus contain nothing new; examples of decorative images are "views" made of straw, hair or even corn-meal, typically tasteless curios without any historical, let alone artistic, value. Perhaps the single exception is József Szentpéteri's memorial plaque for the opening of the Pest Rifle Range in 1824. Otherwise they do not belong among vedutas proper.
The period begins and ends with the onset of new phases of urban development. Around 1800, feudal Pest became capitalist, the Baroque and Rococo architectural styles giving way to the bourgeois style of Neo-Classicism. A major influence on the urban landscape, apart from the social changes, was the Pest Improvement Commission (Verschönerungscommission), which started work in 1809 and produced the specifications for the Lipótváros district, the most visually striking part of Pest outside the city centre. As Pest expanded and its outward face fundamentally changed, images of the city also changed in mode of representation as well as in content. This is immediately apparent from a comparison with the first volume (György Rózsa: Budapest régi látképei. Bp., 1963, 2nd edition: 1999), and at the end of the period there was another change: with some generalisation, vedutas up to about the 1870s were composed as impressions, but from then on they tended to be optically and topographically realistic. The end-point (1870) takes its definition from the onset of very rapid development in Pest (not so in Buda), the result of new political and economic factors in the 1860s. Expansion of trade and transport, and general changes of conditions in Pest (and in Buda to some extent) prompted the authorities to tighten the links between the two cities, finally joining them together in Act XXXI of 1872.
A crucial point in the several-year process of unification was Act X of 1870, which set up the Public Works Council. This, unlike unification, which was essentially an administrative measure, had a direct effect on how the cityscape developed, and thus on the visual record of these changes, the vedutas.
The Public Works Council was the heir of the Improvement Commission, and so the year of its foundation seems suitable, and logical, as the breakpoint in the iconographic material. In addition to urban history considerations, changes in style of representation and mode of collection also support the choice of 1870 as the endpoint. The preoccupation with faithfully representing the cityscape in the ages of Classicism and Romanticism increasingly gave way to artistic considerations, which were not always conducive to the topographical fidelity essential to records of urban and local history.
Photography was also developing into an industrial mass product at that time, and eventually almost completely eclipsed graphic representations. Even lithography, which could be produced quickly and in almost unlimited copies, was unable to keep pace with photography. Photography of the 1800-1870 period, unfortunately but necessarily, is another topic excluded from the scope of this book. Completeness is a realistic aim for collection of graphics, both manual and reproduction, and even more so for painting, but is impossible for photography. Neither the opening nor closing dates may be regarded as precise points of the calendar; a "margin of error" of a few years must be reckoned with as regards images of the urban landscape. This latitude is no more than two or three years, which has little significance in practice.
The book divides into two parts: the catalogue, which is of primary significance, and the preceding historical part, which is really follows from, and explains, the catalogue.
The catalogue groups vedutas typologically, by viewpoint. Analogously the imprecision of the time limits, the viewpoint defining a particular group is not a single geometric point. The typological presentation gives a more striking, tangible view of how the urban landscape developed than a rigid chronological line-up. Chronology is maintained, however, within categories to the extent that it can be clearly determined (from the year of publication or an object represented). The catalogue starts with overall views of Pest-Buda (Buda, Pest, Margit Island, Danube, Gellért Hill, Chain Bridge) and continues with smaller units, and then individual objects. In the interests of practicality, locations are given in terms of the 1950 division of Budapest into districts, used even though these do not follow, or even take into account, the city's historical evolution. A typical example is Viziváros, a single coherent area which is administratively split between the 1st and 2nd Districts. The 5th District represents the opposite case, where the old, medieval part of the city was joined to Lipótváros, laid out in recent times to a completely different structure. But grouping images of the city by administrative district greatly facilitates searches for the purposes of historical research, restoration of historic monuments or other enquiry. By listing all representations of a building within each period under the heading for that building, the catalogue makes these historical sources practically accessible.
Preceding the catalogue section in order, if not in significance, is the historical section. This consists of four large chapters, each dealing with a period covering the development of the city and, along with it, the cityscape, but only dealing with how much the images of the city, i.e. the vedutas, reflect the city's actual appearance, and outlining the history of artistic representation. Inseparable from this, of course, is the history of the vedutas themselves, including their analysis and evaluation in terms of urban history and art history, but only to the extent permitted even by such a large book.
The four chapters correspond to periods into which the visual representation of urban development may be divided between 1800 and 1870. Each chapter starts with an outline of the history of the city and then discusses the most significant vedutas, then images of smaller units of the cityscape (squares, streets, buildings) and some potentially valuable anecdotal pictures and representations of events (flood pictures etc.) Series of views and groups of pictures are presented immediately after the vedutas.
I. 1789-1808
1. Pest Cityscape
In the final decades of the eighteenth century, Pest developed into the wealthiest city in Hungary. Trade demanded new land for market places, which was not available in the Belváros (city centre) enclosed by the city walls, or even in the suburbs of Terézváros, Józsefváros and Ferencváros, which had become quite densely built up by the end of the century. The only free area near the city was in front of the north city wall. This area was laid out, and building plots designated, including the enormous Újvásár (Erzsébet) Square, in 1789. The basis of the layout was a plan by János Schilson , Administrator of the Royal Chamber, which survives in József Polenzig's etching and the associated short Hungarian-language explanation . The layout plan concerned an area in what is now Lipótváros, between Deák Ferenc utca, Arany János utca, the bank of the Danube and Bajcsy Zsilinszky út. The plan proposed a rectangular street grid, in departure from the layout of the City Centre and the suburbs. The centre of gravity of the area, Vásártér (Marketplace) was nearly square. The Schilson Plan left in place older buildings like the Salt Warehouse and of course the recently-built Újépület ("New Building"). One its aims was to lay out the area between the Újépület and the Vác Gate. An interesting feature of the plan as regards visual representations is its inclusion of the loess mounds which appear on a veduta by Sámuel Mikovny.
Sixteen years after the publication of the Schilson Plan, the Pest City Council engaged architect János Hild to draw up a development plan. Hild somewhat adjusted and expanded the Schilson Plan, designating plots up to the line of what is now Markó utca, and in the west designed the Dunasor, which corresponds to the east side of Apáczai Csere János utca. Hild's plan also shows the Rakpiac (Roosevelt tér), although incorporating a much smaller area than was later implemented. The north boundary of the square lay along what is now Mérleg utca, and its southern boundary along József Attila utca. Hild's street grid was defined partly by the position of the Újépület, and partly - north of today's Alkotmány utca - the line of the Danube. The new suburb was thus based on the plans of János Schilson and János Hild, and the City Council, at its session of 12 April 1790, named it Lipótváros.
The Improvement Commission, which was instituted in 1805 and started operation in December 1808, accepted the concept of János Hild's plan for Lipótváros.
In the two decades which had passed since Schilson produced his plan, Pest had started to transform from a feudal Baroque city to something resembling a large modern city where the classicist style was displacing the Baroque. It was more than just the new style which put paid to Pest's Baroque character: the medieval elements of the cityscape, like the city walls and gates, which harmonised so well with the Baroque, gradually disappeared. Pest's gates were demolished one by one around 1800, although the walls partly remained in the structures of buildings which had been built in front of them, as can still be clearly seen on some city-centre buildings. Connected with both the city walls and the gates were the rondellas, the last of which, the "Theatre Rondella", was demolished in 1815.
The whole period was one of transition. Alongside the Baroque, represented mainly by churches, the City Hall, the Invalidus Palace and some private houses, the Louis XIV style appeared with significant buildings like the Greek Church, the Queen of England Hotel, the parish churches of Terézváros and Józsefváros, and the Curia. The latter was contemporaneous with the Classicist buildings known from the illustrations to Die Stadt Pesth., a collection of letters published by J. Leyrer, including the Festetich Mansion in the Fűvészkert (1803). The Evangelical church in the Szén-piac ("Coal Market", now Deák Ferenc tér) was built during the second decade of the period.
2.Pest Vedutas
From the turn of the century until 1808, the only pictorial representations of the Pest cityscape are the "guild charters", certificates of guild members' residence in Pest, illustrated with pictures of the city. The same applies to Buda. These images were of course intended to represent the seat of the guild and decorate the charter rather than to record the cityscape. Consequently, they did not aim for a very high artistic standard. The Baroque-era guild charters, particularly those by János Fülöp Binder, have very handsome, highly artistic border decorations, but these became simpler after 1800. Although the appearance of some particular buildings cannot be accepted as genuine, the guild charters give a true representations of the cityscape as a whole, and so are valuable historical sources.
Besides the Baroque Belváros with its many towers, the guild certificates clearly show the gradual building-up of the area between the Újépület and the bank of the Danube; the appearance of the new market place; and the development of Lipótváros north of the site of the Vác Gate, following the Schilson Plan. At a time when the cityscape was in transition, changing forms also appeared in the drawing style and border of the guild charters. Besides pure Rococo, decoration sometimes included Louis XIV features linked either to the Rococo or the Classical.
The viewpoint for the guild charter vedutas was in the north-west, somewhere near the middle of Buda Castle Hill. On 18th century charters, the viewpoint is further south, and so Pest is presented from the south-west. The artists who made and illustrated the charters included the etchers J.F. Binder, who had also produced many in the previous period, Ágoston Mayer, and Antal Tischler (fig. 1).
Besides the guild charter views, there is a veduta showing Pest front-on from the Várkert (also on Castle Hill) and another from a birds-eye viewpoint above the royal palace. The former was drawn by János Rauschmann and etched by János Blaschke ; the latter was the work of etcher Gottfried Prixner for the Leyrer book already mentioned, which included eight Prixner etchings, some showing Neo-Classical Pest buildings which have since disappeared, including the Illés Well, the source of the best water in Pest.
3. Buda Cityscape
In this period, Buda essentially presented the face of a Baroque city built on medieval foundations. Between 1782 and 1785, however, unlike Pest, the Buda cityscape underwent some negative developments, showing up particularly in the picture of Castle Hill. By a decree of Joseph II, several orders of monks were disbanded, and their monasteries, including the churches, were used for secular purposes. Demolition of their churches deprived the Buda cityscape of some distinctive features. It marked the end of some medieval, as well as Baroque buildings. Other demolitions were the enormous Vizi Rondella, part of the castle's defensive system, which stood where Ybl Miklós tér is now, the Halászkapu (Fishermen's Gate) and its bastion at the south end of what is now Lánchíd utca, and the last Turkish mosque in Buda, the "Saltpetre Mosque", a jami built by Mustapha Pasha, at the corner of Fő utca and Kacsa utca. Whereas the Pest cityscape only lost medieval features from its landscape in the late 18th century and gained Louis XIV and Classicist buildings, the Buda cityscape during the Baroque years regressed by the standard of the time during the 1780s, until the gradual development of Krisztinaváros at on the western slope of Castle Hill in the final years of the century.
Since the Pest Improvement Commission had no remit for Buda, 1809/1809 does not mark the start of an era of urban development for Buda. To retain coherence in discussion of Pest-Buda urban development, however, no attempt will be made to find a separate - possibly artificial - era-boundary. Pest had taken the lead in any case, and vedutas of Buda were not produced in any significant numbers before the 1810s.
4. Buda Vedutas
The Historical Gallery has a watercolour dated to the very beginning of the 1800s showing Pest from the east in which Buda also appears in the background. Owing to the distant viewpoint, however, the painting does not present a detailed image of Buda. The artist is unknown.
One of Prixner's illustrations of the Leyrer letters shows Buda above floating mills anchored along the Ferencváros riverbank. Made soon afterwards was János Blaschke's etching of almost the same title. Both vedutas are small, and the mode of representation is sketchy.
The guild charters were printed from plates made in the 18th century, and only the year - in fact only the second digit of the year - changed. So on the date of the guild charter form, the number 17 on the plate was changed to 18. New guild charter plates and woodcuts were made around 1815 (fig. 2).
II.1809-1838
Such an exquisite picture, the serious grey-haired past
And the cheerful present woven into your canvas
There majestic Buda, here civilian Pest
In one our old glory, in the other a world yet young.
And still brothers? "Brothers" comes the echo
And the mighty Gellért shouts back "Buda-Pest".
János Garay's lines succinctly distil and express the essence of three decades of urban history. The conservative administrative Buda and the lively, prosperous and progressive outlook Pest, centred on Lipótváros, in the Age of Reform.
1. Pest Cityscape
Pest was in most cases drawn from Gellért Hill or the Castle, causing the vedutas to show as their most prominent feature the left bank of the Danube, which was gradually built up in the north-south direction in the 1810s and 1820s. It was during this time that the row of buildings known as the Dunasor (at first without the Vigadó concert hall) and - between 1826 and 1838 - József Hild's mansions on the Rakpiac square - were built. The Vigadó was built in 1832.
The German Theatre was built in the inner part of Pestváros in 1812, and the Magyar Király (King of Hungary) Hotel beside it a year later. The Lipótváros Parish Church - subsequently destroyed in the siege of 1849 - was dedicated in 1817. The Ludoviceum was built between 1830 and 1834 and the National Theatre, known until 1840 as the Pest Hungarian Theatre, between 1835 and 1937. The year of its opening marked the start of construction of the National Museum, which was completed at the beginning of the next period, as was County Hall , started in 1838. Many private mansions built at that time appear as border pictures in a series of maps by Vasquez map. The Neo-Classical Pest cityscape was effectively completely in place by the end of the period.
2. Buda Cityscape
The Buda cityscape changed at several points in comparison with the previous period. A new astronomical observatory was built on the top of Gellért Hill in 1813-1814, and directly adjacent to it, the astronomers' house in 1817. Of surviving Baroque buildings, the spire of the Tabán Parish Church disappeared, the victim of a fire which broke out in 1810. The Royal Palace lost its Maria Theresa-era form in 1830 with the demolition of the observatory tower, which had become redundant upon the completion of the Gellért Hill observatory. At the same time, the western cupola was removed and the palace given a simple pitched roof. The Classical-style synagogue in Óbuda was built during 1820 and 1821, and its authoritative outline adjacent to the Baroque parish church became a substantial feature of the Óbuda townscape. István Kollár's pen-and-ink drawing of 1812 gives an almost photographically faithful picture of Óbuda and its surroundings (fig. 3).
3. Pest-Buda Vedutas
It was at this time that vedutas showing the double city as a whole started to appear in greater numbers, and separate views of Buda or Pest became, relative to the previous period, less common. The method applied hitherto of discussing images of the two cities separately is now inappropriate, because it would require a third, "Pest-Buda" category and thus interfere with the chronology and thus the presentation of urban development. The typological structure of the catalogue section, however, ensures that independent views of different parts of the city - including Buda and Pest - are presented separately.
The first veduta is the pen-and-wash drawing of Franz Jaschke, showing the Pest side of the Danube south of the pontoon bridge, viewed from the Tabán bank. Two features on this drawing are of special significance: the still-unfinished German Theatre and the Theatre Rondella, which stood until 1815 in what is now Régiposta utca, at Apáczai Csere János utca. As already seen, the rondella appeared on several guild charters, but its form appears different on nearly every one of them.
The date of the pen drawing may be inferred from the state of construction of the German Theatre and the Baroque shape of the Tabán Church spire. Work on the theatre started in 1808 and the spire was destroyed on 5 September 1810, so the drawing must have been made no earlier than autumn 1809 and no later than 4 September 1810. The attribution is based on a Jaschke drawing of the same subject in the Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, and on other style factors (fig. 4).
András Petrich's watercolour of the illuminations for the Austrian, Russian and Prussian emperors' visit to Buda in1814, now held in the Historical Gallery, presents Gellért Hill, Tabán and Castle Hill from the north-east. Some of the letters of the welcoming Latin text are placed on pontoon stages anchored to the north of the pontoon bridge. The blue-toned aquarelle is primarily a mood picture, but its urban history value, apart from recording the illuminations, derives from the "flying bridge" in the left foreground.
About a year later, an otherwise unknown artist called Silber produced a larger watercolour of the city viewed from the foundations of the Pest Vigadó concert hall, which was under construction. The picture, now in the Kiscelli Museum, shows Gellért Hill and Castle Hill, similarly to the Petrich veduta. It is of little artistic merit, but includes a dry but accurate drawing of the Castle and clearly shows that no building stood in front of Mihály Pollack's Vigadó in these years. Construction of the Vigadó stopped in 1809 at the foundation walls appearing in the foreground of the Silber Veduta and only resumed in 1832. A view by Petrich, discussed below, and other pictures based on it, shows the Redout, a mansion house designed by Joh. Aman but never actually built. The picture must have been made at the latest in 1816, because it does not include the house built beside the observatory in 1817 (Fig. 5).
The English traveller Richard Bright visited Hungary in 1816. His Travels from Vienna through Lower Hungary was published in 1818, and one of its steel-etching illustrations shows Pest-Buda from the top of Gellért Hill. It is from this drawing, dated to 1817, that marks the resumption of vedutas drawn from Gellért Hill, which had been popular during the 17th century (following Hallart's vedutas). The representation is somewhat superficial; it is more of an artistic impression. It, like the other illustrations in the book, is signed RB, which can only mean the author himself, all the more so because the cloudy sky and vivid light effects reflect Bright's description, in a similar mood, of a brief storm he experienced at the top of a hill. Made in1817, it was a very early steel engraving.
One of the most significant the vedutas of Pest and Buda of any period is a copper-plate engraving by Antal Fülöp Richter made in 1818 after a drawing by András Petrich. This very finely etched drawing, like Bright's steel engraving, but completely independently of it, shows Pest-Buda seen from beside the Gellért Hill observatory, with a foreground consisting of very distinguished figures who are being shown the twin cities through a telescope by - according to Arnold Schoen - János Pasquich, Director of the Observatory. To the left of this little group, on the door of a carriage, are the letters AP, the monogram of the artist András Petrich. Petrich's veduta of 1818 is "the first overall representation of Buda, Pest and . the Danube-side buildings up to Wurm utca since the Improvement Commission was instituted." (Fig. 6).
Petrich was an amateur landscape painter and military engineer. His veduta, with its fine drawing and colouring and accurate perspective, was one of the best-loved views of the time. The excellent viewpoint alone made it the "ancestor" of a great many variants. Perhaps the most widespread of these variants was a print published by the company Artaria a few years later.
Petrich's original painting is unknown, but like his Alpine landscapes it must have been a gouache brush drawing, engraved on copper plate by Antal Fülöp Richter and published in thirty copies by János Schmid, an etcher and lithographer of Buda. The copies were tinted. Besides the copy made for István Illésházy, which was tinted by Petrich himself, the Kiscelli Museum has one coloured and signed by Teréz Nyitray. On this copy, the monogram AP does not appear on the door of the carriage, which reinforces the hypothesis that András Petrich himself coloured the engraving for Illésházy
Very similar to the Silber veduta is one by an otherwise unknown painter called Fide, showing Gellért Hill and Castle Hill from near the Pest end of the pontoon bridge. Dated 1819, this oil painting boasts no great artistic virtue, but is quaintly primitive and captures the mood of life beside the Danube. It is also highly detailed, and therefore a useful local history source (fig. 7).
The guild charters printed between 1811 and 1817, as their predecessors, show Buda and Pest separately. Pest, however, is shown in front view instead of from the north west. The same is true for Buda. I. Wilt's woodcut guild charter view of Buda was based on the model set by J. Fülöp Binder in 1780, and although it was printed in 1815, its border is still decorated in the Rococo style (Fig. 2). This mirrors the slower development of Buda itself. Gottfried Prixner's copper-plate etching for a guild charter of 1816 gives a new, more realistic view of Castle Hill and the Tabán. In Prixner's guild-charter veduta of Pest made the following year, the observatory residence built in 1817 is seen the foreground, but the Theatre Rondella has disappeared, having been demolished in 1815. Renner adapted the Prixner Veduta (1816) at the earliest in 1817 for a guild charter published in 1822 , but his work falls short of Prixner's in terms of both faithfulness of representation and artistic standard. The unknown etcher of the Buda Fishermen's Guild charter closely follows Renner in his drawing of Castle Hill, taking over the topographical errors, but adds Rózsadomb hill. . The guild charter vedutas usually show Buda from the Tabán to the Országút district, and Pest (around 1800) from the Újépület to the Ferencváros Military Hospital and (in the 1810s) from the south of the Újépület to the Serb Church.
The Kiscelli Museum has a series of six pencil-and-wash views from the years around 1815 . These show Buda and Pest and parts of the two cities from various points. The Museum inventory states the name of the artist as Nep. János Höchle. In 1821, Baron József Brudern, art collector and patron of Pest, engaged Károly Markó to record a beautiful part of each of Buda and Pest. Only one oil painting reproduction is known of from this series, and its topographical authenticity is dubious. According to the catalogue of the magazine Gyűjtő ("Collector") , it presents Óbuda from Margit Island, but the damaged condition of the picture and thus of the reproduction prevents an accurate identification of the painting's subject. No item on the painting can be definitely linked to Óbuda. The extent to which Károly Markó satisfied Brudern's order therefore remains unknown.
In the same year, Ferenc Schams published a description of the city of Pest. One of the appendices to this book was an etching by Ferenc Blaschke, a view of Pest from a point on the Danube bank to the north west. The viewpoint, if not the style, is reminiscent of the guild charters.
Schams followed up his Pest with a book on Buda in 1822, bigger than the first and with more extensive descriptions. One appendix to this monograph is lithograph by Jacob Alt from a brush drawing veduta by János Rauschmann, viewed from the Pest end of the pontoon bridge. The original of this reliable veduta has been in the Kiscelli Museum since 1932.
Other vedutas of the Petrich-Artaria type are an etching the Vienna artist Jacob Hyrtl, published as a calendar illustration in 1832, a lithograph published by J.A. Schlosser and an etching published by Barth. All of these are based on the Artaria print, which is also the prototype, mutatis mutandis, for some 1838 flood pictures.
The widely-travelled Viennese painter Franz Jaschke painted and made engravings everywhere he went. Five watercolours record his stay in Pest-Buda. Of approximately equal size, they were made in 1824 and 1825. One shows Buda from the Pest Danube-side, similarly to the Rauschmann - J. Alt veduta, , another the Castle from Festősziget island (fig. 8), and a third Óbuda from Margit Island. Another two show details of Margit Island, including the holiday residence of the Palatine. An interesting feature in the veduta of the Castle from Festősziget, from which a lithograph was also made, is the astronomical observatory tower in a state of demolition, which dates the image to around 1830.
Also from these years is the Herzinger Aquarelle, a view of the Danube based on a drawing by Wonsidler, looking north from the road under Gellért Hill. The print was published by the art dealer Riedl. The copy in the Historical Gallery is merely in the engraving state, without aquatint. Although Wonsidler's veduta does not match Petrich's standard, it spawned more variants (fig. 9). A series of copperplate engravings by an unknown artist was published by Ferdinánd Tomala in 1827. The eight prints known of from the series are held in the Kiscelli Museum engravings collection. They show the Castle from Pest (fig. 10), Gellért Hill from the Pest side of the Danube, Servita tér, Színház tér, Baron Orczy's glasshouse, the "Wire Bridge" (Dróthíd) in Városliget park, the harbour area on Margit Island, and Ferenchalom. An announcement in the 1827 edition of Gemeinnützige Blätter mentions only four prints. There were probably no more than eight in total.
Two artists have been proposed as being responsible for the Tomala series: János Hofbauer and Franz Jaschke. Hofbauer produced a large-format drawing of the opening of the trial railway built between Kőbánya and the Hatvan line (now Baross tér) in 1827. A finely-drawn aquatint print of this was made by Ede Gurk. It shows Pest in the background, and behind it Castle Hill and the more distant Buda Hills. The same artist drew Pest-Buda in 1831, with a fruit-picking scene in the foreground, but did not complete the painting (fig 11). Jaschke is known of from the already-mentioned series of five watercolours, produced in 1824/1825. Comparing the Tomala series with the Hofbauer and Jaschke vedutas, Hofbauer comes out the more likely candidate. The main clues are similarity of the staffage figures and the drawing of the vegetation, and the affinity of the fine, slightly dry lines. Other evidence in favour of Hofbauer is that Jaschke travelled widely and spent little time in Pest-Buda, and that the Tomala series is contemporary with the drawing of the Kőbánya trial railway.
In the same year (1827), János Szentgyörgyi, an artist from Upper Hungary, painted a picture of little artistic distinction from the Pest side of the Danube, with a scene of boats unloading in the foreground. He also painted Pest-Buda from the eastern slopes of Gellért Hill in languid colours, but in a firmer outline than his picture of the Royal Palace.
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After the Napoleonic Wars, the taste for travel spread throughout Europe as new roads were built, old roads improved and transport extended. One result was the emergence of travel writing. Illustrated books were produced to satisfy the curiosity of those whose means prohibited them from going to foreign parts in person. Travellers from Western Europe were particularly fascinated by the "Romantic Orient". This phenomenon started to unfold in the 1810s, although the germs may be detected in mid-18th century Romanticism. Travellers to the East typically went by boat down the Danube to the Balkans. In addition to accounts of journeys, there were books on popular geography, such as Europäisches Panorama of the mid-1820s, to which was appended a copperplate etching of Wonsidler's Danube veduta.
Of the several albums featuring towns along the Danube, there is one which stands out: Zwey hundert vier und sechzig Donau-Ansichten, commonly known simply as Donau-Ansichten. It was published in four landscape-oriented volumes in Vienna in 1826 by the lithographer Adolf Kunike. The vedutas of towns between the source of the Danube and Belgrade were drawn by Jacob Alt and made into lithographs by A. Kunike, and those between Belgrade and the Black Sea by Kunika himself. The drawings were made continuously between 1820 and 1826. Five pages are devoted to images of Buda, Pest and Margit Island: page CXLIV shows Óbuda, the next page the ruins of the Franciscan Church on Margit Island, page CXLVI Buda and Pest from the Ferencváros riverbank, the next page Óbuda with Kiscell, and the last page the Danube bank viewed from the north west. The volume with the Pest-Buda prints appeared in 1824. Some variants of the prints were published separately in high print runs. Veduta no. 148 was painted in oils by Wicksteed in 1834, with some changes to the staffage (Fig 12).
In the 1830s, as surface and water transport improved, travel literature made further advances. The start of Danube navigation was of enormous significance for Pest-Buda. More and more foreign - mainly English - travellers came to Pest and Buda for stays of varying duration, some in transit to the Balkans or Asia Minor. The accounts of their travels were frequently illustrated with views of Pest or Buda. Pest had by that time largely taken on its Neo-Classical face, and travellers typically described its harmonious spectacle in terms of wonder. On visiting Pest in 1835, John Paget wrote, ". drive along the riverbank. Note the first three or four buildings and say if you know a private building more magnificent or built in better style.. Opposite these buildings, a new bridge is planned over the Danube." He was referring to the Rakpiac and the Nákó Mansion. It was in the axis of the latter that the Chain Bridge was to be built, starting in 1839.
Michael Quin travelled to Pest in 1836. The beginning of his account also mentions the large houses built in the "modern style". The original English and French editions of Quin's book were published together with lithographed vedutas based on Jacob Alt's Donau-Ansichten.
Julia Pardoe visited Pest on her way to Constantinople in 1836, and returned in 1839, staying in the city for an extended period. In her book The City of the Magyar., published in 1840, she wrote "Curious, the peace that reigns over Buda, a kind of silent royal dignity. Thoughts involuntarily drift into the past as you go up the steep heights. But you only have to go across the bridge for the present, the active, ambitious, vital present to open up before your eyes. everything is so fresh, so pure, so much reflecting growing life, that. set against the demands of Buda. Pest will of necessity on day be capital of the country which is already resembling a giant stirring from some deep slumber. This romantic juxtaposition of Buda and Pest seems to echo the thoughts conveyed by Garay quotation at the beginning of this chapter.
George Hering published a folio album Sketches on the Danube in Hungary and Transylvania in 1838 . Despite its title, it also included representations of castles and towns in Upper Hungary and even of the stalactite cave at Aggtelek, and it extended to ethnographic subjects in addition to the landscapes. Hering dedicated his book to István Széchenyi, writing, "Hitherto, Hungary has been almost forbidden ground for the European traveller.with the Steam Boat on the Danube it becomes almost as easy as a Tour on the Thames.". Of the 26 prints, in Hering's album, only one is of Pest-Buda, a Danube view from the Viziváros riverside. Doubts may be cast on the authenticity of the cityscape, and on the size of the boat anchored by the bank, but these are compensated by the delicacy of the drawing, so that even the lithograph conveys the artistry by which the English painter conveys the atmospheric effects.
During the 1830s, Adolf Kunike's Donau Ansichten was republished in two smaller editions. One, under the title Malerische Donaureise vom Ursprunge bis Belgrad, was published by Mansfeld in 1833, with Pest-Buda vedutas on pages 7 and 8 of Part IV. The other, entitled Die Donau vom Ursprunge bis Belgrad , was published by Förster without an indication of the year, but certainly in that decade. Both adapted the same two pictures of the Alt-Kunika album, and despite being much smaller, the adaptations do not essentially differ from the originals.
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János Szentgyörgyi, whose painted vedutas of 1827 and 1829 have already been mentioned, painted another two vedutas in the 1830s. The most successful of the four was completed in 1830. Its viewpoint is near the saddle between the Gellért and Naphegy hills, an area still covered by vineyards. It shows the Royal Palace, by then rebuilt in the Neo-Classical style, with Pest in the right background. . The signed and dated watercolour sketch for this veduta has also survived.
A veduta by János Hofbauer of 1831, already mentioned in connection with the attribution of the Tomala engravings, which had been published in 1827, shows Pest from Rózsadomb. Hofbauer coloured or painted only the foreground and the sky, perhaps deliberately leaving the centre uncoloured so as not to wash out the minute detail of the drawing. The pencil drawing is of almost photographic precision (fig. 11).
János Szentgyörgyi's last veduta is almost identical with that of 1828, the only novel features being the insertion of an utterly inappropriate staffage couple in the foreground, and the Pest Vigadó, which had been completed in the meantime. The carriage on the road under Gellért Hill again appears on this later veduta, which is neither signed nor dated, but comparison with the former, almost identical painting puts Szentgyörgyi's authorship beyond doubt, and may be dated to around 1835, or at least certainly between 1831, when the Vigadó was completed, and 1839, when building work on the Chain Bridge - of which there is no trace on the picture - started. Also dated to 1835 is a pair of vedutas which show Pest-Buda from the road under Gellért Hill (after Wonsidler) and from Bomba (Batthyány) tér. These two lithographs were made by the art teacher Ignác Weissenberg, born in Teschen, who settled in Pest after periods in Vienna and Pozsony (Bratislava). Neither of them bear any great historical or artistic value, and the first is a derivation from Wonsidler, but the second is an original view and appears two years later in an adaptation by Vasquez. It is striking that, Despite being an art teacher, Weissenberg made a surprising number of errors of perspective, even though, at least for one of his vedutas, he was working from Wonsidler's much more accurate picture.
Miksa Félix Paur, born in Bavaria, started working as a draughtsman in Pest in 1832, first with Mihály Pollack and then with József Hild. In 1837, he made a large drawing of the Rakpiac, with the Dunasor connecting from the south. Bergmann made a lithograph of the drawing and published it in Munich (fig. 13). In the same year, a different version of the drawing appeared with the same buildings but with different staffage figures in front of the Rakpiac. Paur's veduta, with deep perspective achieved by greatly reducing the Dunasor buildings, appeared in many smaller versions. These came to an abrupt halt in 1839 when work started on the Chain Bridge, fundamentally changing the foreground of Paur's drawing. Before his 1837 veduta, Paur also made a lithograph of the section of the Dunasor between the Nákó Mansion and the Belváros Church for the 1834 edition of Fillértár. Two versions of that picture are known. Paur's entry in the four volume Művészeti Lexikon (Encyclopaedia of Art) also mentions a plan by Paur for a permanent bridge between Pest and Buda.
Equal if not greater in importance to the wide-angle vedutas charting the general development of the urban landscape are images of smaller parts of the city which, by their nature, convey much greater detail. Their subjects are squares and single buildings, and became increasingly common through the work of R. Alt, L. Rohbock and their followers.
At the head of an advertisement for the Magyar király (King of Hungary) Hotel, which opened in 1814, is an etching of the building by Prixner, and in the 1820s, Domokos Perlaszka produced an advertisement for the former Nádor Hotel in Váci utca, of which only the copper plate survives, no contemporary print having come to light. The plate is in the Kiscelli Museum (fig. 14). Also by Perlaszka, after a drawing by Károly Schwindt, is the brochure of the Vadászkürt Hotel, also from the 1820s. In 1835 or slightly later, the Magyar Király Hotel, published another advertisement, this time as a three-part image ribbon. Others in the same category are the illustrated brochures of the Tigris Hotel and the Angol Királynő Hotel, which survive only in very small numbers.
Representations of single buildings other than hotel advertisements fall into two groups: (1) veduta border pictures and (2) albums and book illustrations. The first includes Antal Strohmeyer's map of 1835 with 14 border pictures of major buildings in Pest at that time. In the Csillag collection, Arnold Schoen mentions under the title Ofen und Pest von der Josef Bastey in Ofen a Pest-Buda veduta surrounded by 12 views of the environs of Buda and Pest, by Fr. Faltus. This lithograph is unknown to the present author. Its date of publication is given as "c. 1835?". An adaptation of the Petrich-Artaria veduta by Schlosser is surrounded with landscape details from Pest and Buda. The border pictures are simple copies of the views published by the Vienna publisher F. Barth, including their errors. Their publication may be dated to some time in the 1830s.
A four-sheet series of maps by P. Károly Vasquez were drawn in 1837 and published the following year. These were also surrounded by lithographs of notable Pest-Buda buildings. There are a total of seventy-six pictures around the four maps, some of which are landscapes. Among them are an adaptation of a Matthias-era view of Buda and a 17th century view of Pest. Above two of the maps is the Pest riverbank based on Paur's veduta, and some border pictures are taken from vedutas made somewhat earlier, including those by Wonsidler and Weissenberg. The maps were no doubt drawn by the publisher himself. Vasquez was a military engineer, and so was probably also skilled as a cartographer. This attribution is supported by the dedication, in which ". the author, Count Károly Vasquez Pinos, with great respect, dedicates the book Buda és Pest to Emanual Zichy Ferraris." The border pictures, however, are probably due not to Vasquez but the otherwise unknown "Fr. Weiss", whose signature appears on the view (of the Rakpiac) decorating the border of one of the two flyleaves. The abbreviations "Entw[orfen] u[nd] Gest[ochen]" before the name clearly suggest that Weiss also designed and made lithographs for the richly-decorated title page, as well as the other flyleaf, on which there is a representation of Buda and Pest in romantically Gothicized twin windows.
The four-sheet series of maps, together with the two flyleaves, were published in a blue paper cover under the title Buda és Pest Szabad Királyi Varossainak Tájleierása Topographie der königl[ich] ungarischen freyen Städte Ofen und Pesth von Carl Graf Vasquez.
One combination of plan and veduta is Lánchíd-tervek (Chain Bridge Plans), published with a very high print run during the last decade of this period. These show the planned bridge together with its surroundings viewed from the north and from its Buda and Pest ends. The northern view is based on William Tierney Clark's first suspension bridge plan, dated 10 November 1837. The viewpoint for the impression of the bridge is somewhat east of the centreline of the Danube, and north of the bridge, in line with the northern edge of today's Roosevelt tér. On the left of the picture is the Rakpiac south of the Ullmann Mansion (the north neighbour, the Wieser building, was not yet built), with Gellért Hill in the centre of the background and the south part of Castle Hill on the right with the Royal Palace and the Arsenal. This plan was the basis for many contemporary and later variants: in 1830, a steel engraving was made of the W. T. Clark plan based on the Paur drawing, almost a copy of Clark's plan. In 1839, C. Mahlknecht slightly changed the surroundings in another steel engraving (fig. 15). Even in later years, the first Chain Bridge plan was repeated in bill of exchange forms, headed notepaper and music title pages, after the amended bridge plan had been published, and even after the bridge itself had been built, in new variations.
Károly Schwindt drew the Pest Vigadó the pontoon bridge and the Rakpiac from between the Nákó Mansion and the Lloyd Mansion (then the Kereskedelmi Csarnok - "Trade Hall") for a Pest-Buda Wegweiser , published in 1837. The latter has an affinity to the work of the border decorations (signed Fr. Weiss) of the Vasquez series. The steel engraving versions of Schwindt's drawings are signed L. Frommel. The same travel guide includes a Tabán view from today's Ferdinánd Gate, signed "durch W. Creuzbauer in Carlsruhe". The illustrations for the book were made in Creuzbauer's art institute in Karlsruhe, and it was in the same city that Frommel opened a joint studio with the English steel engraver Henry Winkles in 1824. From the Schwindt-Frommel and Frommel-Winkles connection it may be inferred that the illustrations for the travel guides which Winkles engraved for the 1845 issue of Vezéd and the 1844 and later editions of Feldmann's Wegweiser, were also drawn by Károly Schwindt.
The popular geography category includes the three-part series published between 1838 and 1840, Panorama der Oesterreichischen Monarchie, oder malerisch-romantisches Denkbuch der schönsten und merkwürdigsten Donau-Ansichten. This is in fact a short form, the full title being twice as long! Most of the large number of steel engravings illustrating the book are based on drawings by Th. Ender, reproduced by English steel engravers. In the first part, published in 1838 includes three vedutas of Pest-Buda (Castle Hill, Pest from Castle Hill, Rakpiac), and a few years later they were published by K. Adolf Hartleben in a nine-sheet steel engraving series called Pittoreskes Souvenir an die schönsten Ansichten der Donau in Ungarn von Theben bis Golumbacz., similar to Panorama.
In an attempt at completeness, other vedutas of the period should be mentioned: paintings by Jacob Alt, Krauss and I. Raffalt. Alt's small watercolour shows Buda looking north from the side of the Danube under Gellért Hill, but is not based on Wonsidler. It is unlikely that it was ever reproduced, because Alt never finished the colouring of the row of buildings beside the Danube in Tabán, and in 1851 J. Bermann painted a completely new veduta from the same viewpoint for his Malerische Donaureise. F. Krauss painted Buda and Pest from the road to Soroksár, reminiscent of J. Alt's veduta drawn in 1824 and published as a lithograph by A. Kunike. Raffalt's oil painting shows the Castle from the West, with the countryside between the Kis Svábhegy and Sashegy hills in the foreground. The interesting feature is the viewpoint, behind the southern slope of Kis Svábhegy, from where the city was almost never represented in art (fig. 16).
The Vienna publisher Franz Barth put out a series of etchings in the 1830s, on seven of which there are details of Pest-Buda: Margit Island, the Festetich Pavilion in the Fűvészkert, Lipótmező, "Vadászkastély" (Hunting Lodge) in Hárshegyi út, the "Remete" villa in Zugliget, the Kamaraerdő woods, and the Városliget park. The unknown etcher, which may have been the publisher himself, represented these features in a somewhat primitive fashion, and the only merit of the prints is that there are few if any other pictures of these subjects. The Remete and the Vadászkastély (which appears with an erroneous caption referring to Szép Juhászné Inn) are found only here and as small copies among the border illustrations of the Schlosser Veduta mentioned above. The high page numbers of the Barth series indicate that it was a large publication of which only a tiny fraction concerned Pest-Buda. The plan for the Pest Hungarian Theatre appeared in several versions starting in 1835, showing the planned but ultimately abandoned sculptural decoration. The plans mostly appeared as supplements to journals and theatre brochures. The theatre opened in 1837, after which representations naturally reflected the actual state, i.e. without the sculptures (fig. 17).
Calendar supplements carried pictures of the Theatre, the Ludoviceum, , the 1838 flood and subjects which are not actually city views, like the steamboat Emperor Francis, the halls of the Vigadó, etc.
There is a four-print series of the 1827 Pest Horse Race. The lithographs were made by J. B. Clarot from drawings by Ferdinánd Prestel, and printed in János Schmid's press. The series show scenes from different laps, with the race track grandstand in the background (fig. 18).
Images of the 1838 Flood
The flood that devastated parts of Pest and Buda between 13 and 16 March 1838 gave rise to a great many pictures, most of very little artistic merit. These divide into two categories: flood pictures and flood scenes.
The flood pictures are those intended primarily to present the floodwater as it inundated the city, portraying the whole city (e.g. Reichert), or parts of it (e.g. Schwindt-Perlaszka) . The accompanying scenes - of rescue, collapsing buildings and the like - are secondary or staffage-like.
Flood scenes, by contrast, show events related to the flood. The genre-like scenes take precedent, and the environment and background are only secondary. Their relation to reality is consequently minimal or non-existent. They were designed to convey horrors in an exaggerated, theatrical manner (e.g. Ranftl).
Occupying first place among the flood pictures in terms of authenticity and artistic standard are the aquatints by Domokos Perlaszka after drawings by Károly Schwindt. The four-print series was published in tinted form. It shows Színház tér (fig. 19), the City Hall Market, the Danube with breaking ice and (on 16 March, the day the waters subsided) Széna Market. The authenticity and artistic standard of these pictures put them on equal terms to a pair of views of Színház tér and Rózsa tér (fig. 20) based on drawings by Károly Klette and adapted by Károly Schwindt and ultimately published in Paris by Hürlimann, also tinted. Both prints are aquatints. The prints in a series Sechs Unglücks-Szenen aus den Tagen der Uiberschwemmung von Ofen und Pest vom 13. Bis 18. März 1838 published by Trentsensky's lithograph press were, according to Arnold Schoen, made by a monogrammist BM or MB. This part of the picture on which this hypothesis is based does not exclude, but neither does it prove, attribution to a monogrammist. The two letters, a B lying on top of an M, appear on the side of a cradle rocking in the foreground of sheet 5 of the series, and may be a monogram, but could also be a decoration. There is explanatory text associated with every sheet; the pictures fall short of the Schwindt-Perlaszka series, and attribution to Miklós Barabás may be ruled out on these grounds alone. The drawings were probably drawn and lithographed by Trensensky.
Károly Klette's drawings were the basis for lithographs by Georg Scheth, published by Ferdinánd Tomala under the somewhat verbose title X. Bildliche Darstellungen sammt Beschreibung als Gedenk-Blätter der am 13.,14.,15. und 16. März 1838 stattgefundenen, furchtbaren und nie erlebten Überschwemmung beyder königlichen freyen Nachbarstädte Ofen und Pest. The title page of the series mentions, besides Károly Klette, the name of Adam Brenner, an academic painter of Vienna, as co-author and artist of the title page. Henrik Horváth is probably correct, however, in proposing that Brenner's co-authorship is purely nominal; his name does not appear on any of the sheets and was therefore involved only in the title page and a commemorative print which also appeared in this series. This commemorative print expresses the gratitude of the inhabitants of Pest-Buda for those who made donations for the assistance of flood victims. In the background of the allegorical picture is an imaginary part of Pest, with the Castle and Gellért Hill in the background. The basic idea is due to Ferdinánd Tomala, the drawing is by Adam Brenner and Károly Klette, and the lithograph by J. Lanzedelly. Horváth does not mention this print, although it is actually the tenth sheet in the series. There are pictures with details of Lipótváros, Terézváros, Józsefváros and Ferencváros, and one of today's Vörösvári út, with Kiscell in the background.
There are four woodcut flood pictures (Színház tér, Széna Market, Józsefváros Church and Nagymező utca) by Franz Collar. An extremely rare item is Strasser's lithograph flood picture of Rókus Hospital and Chapel, which features the only known representation of a statue of St Michael, in a niche on the right.
In the background of a flood picture of Gyár utca by the surgeon István Kaszás is the Valero Silk Factory in Király utca. Kaszás' picture is an oil painting, although a lithograph copy was also made of it. The picture is a crossover between flood picture and flood scene. The original painting was owned by the Buda Rifle Range and was unfortunately destroyed in the Second World War (fig. 21).
Miklós Barabás is represented in this category by a single, small and extremely delicate aquarelle, not a flood picture per se, but a representation of the Derra House, which collapsed when its foundations were damaged by groundwater forced up by the flood.
The flood pictures show many parts of the city and buildings which were not drawn at any other time. Színház tér was the subject of many pictures before and after the flood, but the streets of Józsefváros, Terézváros and Ferencváros were otherwise almost completely neglected by artists. Apart from the Klette-Hürlimann aquatint, Rózsa tér appears only much later, on photographs, even though this was possibly the most harmonious square in the Belváros together with the adjoining, and integral, Sebestyén tér. Both were built over around 1900. This is unfortunately the only substantial merit of many flood pictures, which otherwise are topographically imprecise and artistically deficient. Several flood pictures repeat older types (e.g. Artaria), composing the floodwater into the cityscape. Some prints completely distort the view of the city: on one etching, Behind Castle Hill, floodwater is seen in Krisztinaváros, from where Castle hill emerges like an island. On another picture, the artist drew Pest-Buda in mirror image, with a steamship of giant proportions between the two banks. These primitive and sensational depictions lead on to the.
Flood scenes. These are mostly grand guignol exaggerations of what were undoubtedly tragic events and situations. On the ice floes of the Danube - right in the middle - we see furniture, peacefully sleeping children and other impossible situations. A particular favourite was the drowning figure. Such items do appear in "flood pictures", but only as staffage figures, even where - as in the Schwindt-Perlaszka series - they were illustrations of rescue activities by important persons (Archduke Stephen). In the "flood scenes" they are the primary subject of representation. Such stirring and sensational scenes were intended to make the prints more saleable. A mitigating circumstance is that the publishers mostly used the proceeds from sale to assist the flood victims. Standing in striking and refreshing contrast to the dreadful flood scenes are Iván Forray's watercolour genre scenes. These small aquarelles show the rescue almost in caricature. In one, a whippet is being lowered from a window into a rescue boat, and in another, gentlemen in top hats are rowing a boat. Forray's images cannot be localised, and are really Biedermeier mood pictures.
More romantic, even theatrical, is a scene painted by the Vienna artist Mathias Ranftl. In the foreground of this oil painting is a raft-like contrivance of planks, apparently of a size unsuited to the purpose, but currently accommodating eight persons and preparing to receive another two. A dog and a birdcage complete the family. A two-spired church is seen in the background - perhaps Józsefváros Parish Church. Ranftl painted three versions of this scene. One is in the Museum of Fine Arts, another in the Kiscelli Museum and the third, according to Henrik Horváth's chapter for a book commemorating the centenary of the flood, was in private ownership. Horváth also claimed that there was a copy made in 1857 signed H. B. J, but its whereabouts were unknown in 1938. (22. kép)
The Dresden painter B. J. Schmelzer made a series of watercolours on the life of Miklós Wesselényi, and one is connected with the Pest-Buda flood by intention, although not by subject. The background is actually recognisable as Florence. It is strange that Henrik Horváth, in his flood commemoration book chapter, describes the background as "unrealistic", when in fact this adjective actually applies to the foreground, both the action and its relation to the background.
Common to the flood scenes by Iván (not "István", as Horváth erroneously writes) Forray, Schmelzer and Ranftl are the unidentifiability of location, and so they have no significance as representations of the city, and are only included for the sake of historical completeness.
The 1838 flood undoubtedly had an enormous impact on the life of the double city: a total of 2882 buildings collapsed in Buda, Óbuda and Pest, but its effect on the cityscape showed up only much later. After the event, the Improvement Commission thoroughly discussed the causes of the flood and produced building regulations aimed at preventing a similar catastrophe in future, but no major city plan was drawn up. Urban planning following the flood consisted of no more than adjustments of a few streets and the laying out of a square in the Belváros, near County Hall. Other views made in 1838 and 1839 show no signs of flood damage, because most of the destruction was in low-lying suburbs. The buildings appear in the foreground of the views, in Belváros and Lipótváros, tended to be either higher-placed or more substantial, and therefore suffered at most superficial damage, which was not shown. An exception is the Derra House painted by Barabás, but this collapsed only through the indirect effects of the flood, because it stood on an "island" not covered by water.
A certain group of flood pictures and all of the flood scenes bear the marks of the prevailing Romanticism, without having to identify specific effects of particular masters. It is unlikely - as Henrik Horváth proposed - that the minor artists of Pest-Buda or even Ranftl would have been familiar with the only two paintings which might come into consideration, the Raft of the Medusa or Delacroix' Wreck of the Don Juan, which was later in any case. In the Romantic Age the flood catastrophe was sufficient in itself to engender such images.
III. 1839-1849.
Pest-Buda Cityscape
One of the most significant periods in the history of Pest-Buda vedutas and of the double city itself is the decade between the great flood and the War of Independence. It is spanned - quite literally - by the construction of the Chain Bridge, which became a dominant element in the cityscape and thus the vedutas. A brief history of the building of the bridge thus fits appropriately before a description of the vedutas, some of which portray the development of the bridge.
In 1836, the Diet resolved that a permanent bridge should be built linking Pest to Buda. At the proposal of István Széchenyi, William Tierney Clark produced a design for a suspension bridge (not yet referred to as a "chain" bridge), based on his Hammersmith Bridge. The various versions of the Pest-Buda suspension bridge plan are included here because they are linked to vedutas. William Tierney Clark's first bridge plan is dated 1837, a three-chain suspension bridge with two pitched-roof river piers decorated by columns. The present author has only seen a photocopy of this drawing. It was the basis for several representations, including the Paur-Mahlknecht engraving.
Clark produced a modified bridge plan in 1839. The three-chain and column-decorated river pier plan of 1837 had been simplified to a bridge of two chains and plain piers, only differing in minor details from the Chain Bridge as it stands today. The two variants were discussed in the section on the previous period.
As it took shape, the Chain Bridge became a constantly-changing element of the cityscape. The appearance of the piles of the piers, followed by their scaffolding (fig. 23), the river pier on the Pest and later on the Buda sides and finally, in June 1848, the tensioned chains, are events precisely fixed in time, with the potential for dating images of the double city. In practice, however, this precision has little applicability, because the vedutas do not faithfully follow the phases of construction. Nowhere, for example, are the finished piers represented without the chains. Alt's pen-and-wash drawing comes closest to presenting this condition, but even it shows the construction scaffolding. The vedutas show either the first as-built variant or a bridge corresponding to the second version of the plan, before it was actually built. This, of course, only applies to the period before 1849.
Building in Pest during the decade when the Chain Bridge took shape proceeded at a pace surpassed only in the period of Eclecticism which started in the mid-1860s.
During that decade, new items appeared on the vedutas: County Hall, the new Pest Rifle Range, the Császárfürdő (Imperial Baths) in its form designed by József Hild, the Pest Indóház, and the National Museum, whose construction started in 1837 but now gathered momentum and reached completion in 1842. In 1846, Széchényi Park was laid out on the south side of what is now Szabadság tér. Although not appearing on vedutas, the new private blocks of flats in Lipótváros and the villas of Városliget and the Buda Hills were changing the urban landscape. In the first half of the 1840s, the architectural style was still mature neo-classicism, but the Romantic style soon made its appearance, as may be seen on the Pekáry building in Király utca (1847). A testament to the outstanding talent of Ybl Miklós is his Gothic-Romantic design of the Hermina Chapel in 1842, two years before his Fót Church.
Some artistic developments at that time were the formation of the Pest Műegylet (Art Association) in 1839 and the opening of Jakab Marastoni's school of painting in Nagyhíd utca, in 1846. Jakab Varság's school of painting is known from a watercolour by Ferenc Ujházy. In addition to the new schools, regular exhibitions gave a boost to painting at this time. Although the portrait was the main concern of painters, the finest painted vedutas also date from the 1840s. Miklós Barabás, who settled in Buda, and several Viennese artists who stayed in the city for various periods, drew and painted Pest-Buda, which was now developing under the best possible conditions and had achieved equal rank with the great cities of Western Europe. The most important for the present theme are the two Alts, especially Rudolf, son of Jacob, who produced two series of vedutas.
The cityscape of Reform-era Pest gained a new component in 1844 with the completion of the City Hall, the end of a process of conversion starting in 1824, from a single-storey Baroque to a two-storey Neo-Classical building. The new suburban items on the vedutas have already been mentioned.
The Buda cityscape of the previous period went through striking changes after 1841. That was the year when the spire of the Church of the Virgin Mary (Matthias Church) in the Castle burned down, and from then until its reconstruction towards the end of the century, the church tower was topped by a low pitched roof. Of the Baroque-era face of the Castle, only the Arsenal survived, and that only until the turn of the century. The slower development of Buda meant that no new features appeared on vedutas during this decade.
The geographical extent of Pest-Buda - effectively made a single city by the Chain Bridge - did not change from the previous period, and so the cityscape changed within the existing framework.
2. Pest-Buda Vedutas
German and British artists were among those who produced vedutas. In many cases, British graphic artists reproduced drawings by Germans. From neighbouring Austria, Thomas Ender and later Rudolf Alt visited Pest-Buda, the latter several times.
The finest views of the city at this time - or indeed any time in the history of Budapest - are those by Miklós Barabás. He painted his first veduta in 1841, and three from 1843 stand out in particular: Pontoon Bridge, Rakpiac, Aldunasor (figs. 24-26).
The vedutas from this period start in 1829 with a view from the third storey of the Royal Palace by an otherwise unknown painter called Fitzgerald Minarelli. The information is included in the dedication which the artist wrote on the back of the painting, dated 1829. The Italian dedication was to his friend Cavallini. In the foreground of is the south-east corner of the palace, behind it the Tabán, Gellért Hill, and to the left Belváros and Ferencváros, with the Great Plain spreading in the background. The veduta displays no great artistic qualities, put presents the view - in a precise, dry manner - from an unusual angle, one which has few parallels. The painting was destroyed with the rest of Béla Csillag's collection, and only survives on a photograph. It is roughly similar to the pen-and-ink drawing of the essentially the same city- and landscape viewed the terrace in front of the palace in the 1820s.
The 1840s is the period when smaller parts of the city and individual buildings became the subjects of reproduced images as well as wide-angle vedutas. Some had already appeared on Vasquez' border pictures in 1837/1838, but were now appearing on their own account. Around 1840, Alajos Fuchsthaller's series of small etchings was published by Ehrenreich of Pest, five sheets showing the Dunasor, after Paur, the Trade hall, Nagyhíd utca, the Vigadó and Szervita tér with Ehrenreich's shop, the latter also being an advertisement. Josef Kuwasseg, who had already produced some lithograph vedutas in the previous period had a six-print series published by Vince Grimm in 1842. Aquatints were made of these drawings - five by Martens and one by Hürlimann.
A publication in the Danube-views category is Th. Ender's album Die Wundermappe der Donau oder das Schönste und Merkwürdigste an den Ufern dieses Stromes in seinem Laufe durch die österreichischen Staaten, published by Hartleben in Pest and Leipzig in 1841. Four of its 36 steel engravings are views of Pest-Buda by English engravers: Buda and Pest from Gellért Hill by Radcliffe, Pest from Castle Hill by Sands, the Rakpiac also by Sands, and the Royal Palace also by Radcliffe. The latter three had already appeared in Panorama. At about the same time, Hartleben also published the Pittoreskes Souvenir. series, four of whose Pest-Buda views had been taken from Wundermappe and Panorama, and two showed the Vigadó and the Trade Hall. The steel engravings of the latter were made by Jacob Rauschenfels von Steinberg, who died on 21 August 1841, so that the series must have been made before then. In 1842 or 1843, Hartleben separately published the six Pest-Buda views from Pittoreskes Souvenir under the title Ofen und Pest. Th. Ender's drawing showing the Royal Palace and Pest from Naphegy survives in three versions. One is a Radcliffe engraving (in Wundermappe, Pittoreskes Souvenir and Ofen und Pest), another is an oil veduta from 1842 by Vienna painter J. Holzer, and the third a lithograph which appeared only in 1844 as part of the series Magyarország festői mutatványokban ("Hungary in Feats of Painting") by J. Zahradniczek.
The Holzer Veduta differs from Ender's only in omitting the pontoon bridge, even though its foreground shows trees in leaf, so that it does not represent the winter state when the pontoon bridge was dismantled. It does show the Chain Bridge in its planned form. The shared precursor of Radcliff's engraving and Holzer's painting is Th. Ender's pencil-and-wash drawing from before the demolition of the spire of the Church of the Virgin Mary in Buda and even before work started on the Chain Bridge (1839). The first to be made after Ender's drawing was certainly Radcliffe's engraving, because - as we have seen - it appeared together with Raschenfels' engraving at least a year before Holzer's painting. Holzer was in fact Th. Ender's pupil at the Vienna Academy.
The building of the Chain Bridge inspired several vedutas. The first of note is Miklós Barabás' busy, vivid watercolour of the foundation stone laying ceremony. (Fig. 27) Barabás reworked this theme several times, such as for W. T. Clark in 1843 and for the album of Queen Elizabeth in 1854, both aquarelles. He made the National Museum's large oil painting, between 1858 and 1864, and the Kiscelli Museum's smaller painting - what Barabás' oeuvre catalogue calls a "sketch" - in 1859. The aquarelles made for Clark and the Queen are both unknown.
The progress of the bridge's construction may be followed on the works of Miklós Barabás, Theodor Glatz and R. Alt. The pile-driving work appears on a fine-toned, almost pastel-like watercolour with the Royal Palace in the background (fig. 28). The painting is dated 1841, but almost certainly corresponds to entry number 2831 in Miklós Barabás' oeuvre catalogue, a watercolour from 1842. The title in the catalogue is A budai vár a Lánchíd cölöpeivel. Pest ("Buda Castle with the Piles of the Chain Bridge. Pest"). There are two other entries in the catalogue of Barabás' work concerning the same subject and from the same year: under number 788: "For English ingenieur William Klark, first winter of construction of the Chain Bridge, aquarelle sketch," and under number 1789, "detto second winter", so they could not in fact have been made in the same year. The chronology of the pictures is therefore: the painting for Clark in the winter of 1840/1841, the aquarelle of the bridge piles with the Royal Palace in spring 1841, and the picture introduced as "second winter" - whose present whereabouts is unknown - from the next winter.
Antal Strohmayer designed, drew and published commemorative prints for the Buda and Pest Civil Guard. These have a similar layout, with border pictures showing the various formations and, in the centre, one of the organisation's duties. The print for the Buda Civil Guard shows St György tér on the occasion of a parade, and the Pest certificate the Civil Guard taking part in the ceremony of laying the foundation stone of the Chain Bridge (24 August 1824). The latter picture shows the Rakpiac and the Dunasor, reminiscent of Paur's representation. Strohmayer did not date the commemorative print for the Buda Civil Guard, but it is probably from about the same time as the dated Pest print. Both were printed in the Mangold Press in Pozsony (Bratislava) and are extremely rare nowadays.
From about the same time is a similarly rare etching by Sámuel Lehnhart of a military parade in the foreground of the W. T. Clark-Hawkins version of the plan for the Chain Bridge. The artist's known connection with G. Hawkins makes it certain that the etching - published by Pest tailor Kostyál and clearly an advertisement for his business - was made in the very early 1840s. (Fig. 29)
J. Moshammer's account of his travels Die Donaureise von Wien bis Pest. Nebst Panorama der Donau von Wien bis Pest , published in Vienna in 1842/1843, carried as an annex H. Hummitzsch' steel engraved Panorama showing the stretch of the Danube between Vienna and Pest from above. The distant view of Buda and Pest is seen above the Danube from Gellért Hill, and there are also some smaller details of the city.
In 1843, the London company Virtue published William Beattie's account of his journey along the Danube. The 236-page book was illustrated by W. H. Bartlett, based on "sketches taken on the spot" by German graphic artist F. Abresch. The steel plates were made by various engravers, and there are also some woodcuts used for headings, closing vignettes and illustrations among the text. The account of Pest-Buda is illustrated by four steel engravings and one woodcut: a view of Buda from the Castle (erroneously entitled "from the Observatory"), Gellért Hill, the proposed Chain Bridge, the Royal Palace with the pontoon bridge in the foreground, and a woodcut detail of Castle Hill. The German-language version of Beattie's book was written by O. L. B. Wolff without reference to the original author. It has the same title and identical illustrations, but includes one more picture of Pest-Buda than Beattie's (view from Gellért Hill). Abresch and Bartlett's illustrations are slightly weaker on authenticity than on artistic delicacy. Two of the illustrations (views from Gellért Hill and Castle Hill) are the progenitors of many later variants, and all were probably made in 1840, certainly before 1841.
We have already touched on the vedutas Miklós Barabás painted in 1843: Pesti Dunapart a Lánchíd épülő pilléreivel ("Pest Danube Bank with Piers of the Chain Bridge Under Construction"), in lively blue and white actually shows the pontoon bridge with the Pest Dunasor in the background (fig. 29).
A pesti Rakpiac a Kereskedelmi Csarnokkal ("Pest Rakpiac with the Trade Hall") and Pesti Dunasor Buda látképével (Pest Dunasor with View of Buda) shows the busy life of the Danube riverside in very delicate tones, perhaps under the influence of what he had seen in England. This is particularly striking by comparison with Rudolf Alt. In the same year, in addition to the vedutas for W. T. Clark, he made for another Englishman - either the banker J. C. Pickersgill or the portrait painter H. H. Pickersgill - a watercolour veduta entered into the oeuvre catalogue under the title "Pest" and a watercolour entered as "detto" (i.e. for Pickersgill) with the title a' hídtól sz. Gellérttel ("From the Bridge with St Gellért"). A few lines later the catalogue mentions another veduta: "For Pickersgill, 1 drawing aquarelle, view of Pest". Unfortunately nothing more is known of the pictures made for Pickersgill except that they were painted for 4 gold florins each. Also in 1843, he painted the Tündérszikla cliff in Zugliget, with the Hunyadorom in the background and a sketch Sziklatanulmány a Zugligetből ("Study of a Cliff in Zugliget"), perhaps also the Tündérszikla. (Fig. 30)
In 1844 Konrád Adolf Hartleben published an album, Magyarország festői nyomtatványokban ("Hungary in Art Prints"), in which some of G. Hering's Sketches on the Danube. reappear in smaller form, made by different lithographers. The Album has fifteen plates, including vedutas of Pest (Pest from Castle Hill) and Buda (Castle Hill and Pest from the saddle between Gellért Hill and Naphegy hill), by Ender after Zahradniczek. The primary (steel engraving) versions of these two had appeared a few years before in the print series Pittoreskes Souvenir and Ofen und Pesth, and the latter was appearing in its third variation, with the addition of the (planned) Chain Bridge as well as the pontoon bridge. The album includes versions of drawings by Klette, R. Alt and other artists as well as by Hering and Ender.
The most significant set of Pest-Buda vedutas is Rudolf Alt's thirty-two page lithographed album, published by K. Adolf Hartleben under the title "Buda-Pest" in 1845. Each pictures in the landscape-format album is accompanied by a brief Hungarian and German text, and at the front is a Romantic-Gothic title page somewhat similar to the title page of the Vasquez series. Rudolf Alt's pictures features parts of the city which artists had not hitherto considered worthy subjects. Most interesting and significant are certain parts of town like Zugliget (fig. 31) and the Szép Juhászné Inn (fig. 32), whose 1840s condition is only known of from Alt's picture. There are no other credible representations of Zugliget dating from before Gusztáv Keleti's views of around 1860. The same may be said of Alt's two pictures of Krisztinaváros in the album (figs. 33-34). The drawings were made around 1842/1843, made into lithographs by Franz Xaver Sandmann and printed in the press of J. Rauh. The thirty-two views could be said to represent every part of Pest-Buda except Margit Island and Óbuda. Óbuda was a separate town, not strictly belonging to Pest-Buda. Margit Island, belonging to Óbuda, and was omitted from both this and the Alt prints Festői megtekintések. of around 1852. Some of the latter show the city at an earlier date, the years 1847/1848. The two series will be subjected to a comparative analysis later. A signed Alt oil painting from 1848, i.e. the period between the publication of the two Alt series, once owned by Archduke Joseph and probably destroyed, only survives as a photograph. The viewpoint is the north-east slope of Gellért Hill, looking to the Castle, Pest, the pontoon bridge and the Chain Bridge, now with its chains in place. The latter development, considering Rudolf Alt's precise mode of representation, implies that he painted the picture in autumn 1848, or at least the picture represents the cityscape of that time.
It was about that time that Franz Xaver Sandmann made a lithograph of a large veduta of Buda-Pest viewed from Gellért Hill. The picture erroneously shows the pontoon bridge at Templom tér; the pontoon bridge was completely removed from the print for its 1852/1853 edition, since it no longer existed (Fig. 35). The first edition was published by J. Rauh's Vienna institution.
Several journals of the 1840s featured illustrations with parts of the city in the background of anecdotal pictures. One is J. B. Clarot's Pesther Schiffbrücke in the 1843 volume of Spiegel, showing some goings-on involving the bridge toll, with the customs house at the Pest end of the pontoon bridge (fig. 36). The Pesti Divatlap in 1844 published a fashion picture with the "National Theatre" in the background. In the background of A' szél Pesten (The Wind in Pest), a caricature by D. Perlaszka, is the figure of Kristóf Huber Nagy. (Életképek, 1844; fig. 37.)
Of more significance than these is a commemorative print of the opening of the Pest-Vác railway, a drawing by A. Rohn made into a lithograph by J. Varsányi in 1846 (fig. 38). With the title The First Opening of the Hungarian Central Railway, it shows a train starting out for Vác beside the "Indóháza" heating house in Pest, with the participants in the ceremony. Etchings by J Sürch of the Hungarian Theatre and the German Theatre in Pest were published as supplements to Spiegel in 1847, and the same volume carried a steel engraving of the burning of the German Theatre by A. Fuchstaller (Fig. 39); József Tyroler etched the picture of a Kőbánya railway restaurant in connection with the opening of the Pest-Szolnok railway (also in 1847), and J. B. Clarot made a watercolour of the opening ceremony itself.
3. The 1848-1849 Revolution and War of Independence
Images of events in Pest-Buda during the Revolution and War of Independence, as in the flood scenes, naturally concentrate on the dynamic, rather than the static aspects of the spectacle, and therefore only rarely represent the cityscape with any accuracy. This is particularly true for pictures of the military action surrounding the recapture of Buda Castle, of which the only authentic vedutas are the siege pictures by Mór Apáti (Than) and Károly Klette, and that was actually made after the event. There is therefore no point in classifying "siege pictures" and "siege scenes" as was done for "flood pictures" and "flood scenes", especially because the chronological presentation of events is by the nature of the subject more important than any artificial division by typography or by "picture" and "scene". In any case, the shared subject matter of the representations of each event in most cases itself defines the typological category.
Most representations during the revolutionary period were of the events of 15 March. There is one picture each of the people's assembly held on Szabadság (Városháza) tér on the occasion of the abolition of the robot (serfdom) and the tithe (19 March), the arrival of Lajos Kossuth (24 April), and the people's assembly held for the reception of the youth delegation from Vienna University (24 April). Some lithographs show the breaking up of the jeering of the military commander of Buda, Ignác Léderer (10 May), and one (which survives in a single copy) the mutiny of the Ceccopieri Regiment in the Károly Barracks (11 June). The Kiscelli Museum's copy has been cut round, and neither the artist nor the place of publication is known. The 5 July session of Parliament in the Pest Vigadó was drawn by József Borsos and lithographed by August Pettenkofen (Fig. 40); a degraded adaptation of this was printed in the press of K. Werfer in 1861. Several small lithographs of the session of the Upper House held in the grand hall of the National Museum appeared as supplements. On 28 September, the Imperial Commissioner, Lamberg, was stabbed to death on the pontoon bridge, and event recorded by a pencil drawing by Petrics Soma Orlai and some etchings. (It is interesting that the pictures and written sources usually identify the location of this event as the pontoon bridge or generally "the bridge", but Samu Szerelmei claimed that "Royal Commissioner Ferenc Lamberg was executed by the infuriated crowd in the middle of the Chain Bridge." (Fig. 41) Alfréd Windischgrätz' march into Pest at the head of the imperial forces on 5 January 1849 was drawn as he crossed the Chain Bridge.
A great many prints and a few paintings record events in the siege and recapture of Buda Castle. Images of topographical significance are two ink paintings by Simon Kölbl of the bombing of Újvásártér and the burning of the Royal Palace (Figs. 42-43), and pictures by Mór Than and Károly Klette of the decisive attacks on the Fehérvár Gate and the Rondella, or more precisely the gap ("Bresche") beside the Rondella. These are also sources of local history. Mór Than (then known as Apáti) made an aquarelle and Klette an oil painting of the charge, and there are lithograph versions of both (figs. 44-45). There are two known versions of Klette's siege painting, one in the Kiscelli Museum and the other in the Museum of Military History. Pettenkofen's siege painting is notable for its artistic style (fig. 46). Károly Sterio painted his Sebesült honvéd ("Wounded Soldier") with Romantic accessories and devices, against a background reminiscent of Pettenkofen's busy siege picture (fig 47).
The events of the Revolution and especially the siege of Buda Castle soon lost their currency. The situation changed so quickly there was no time for elaborate finishing of paintings or etchings, especially for the Armee-Bulletins; lithography was the appropriate process for propagating images as quickly and cheaply as possible. The great final cadenza, the recapture of the Castle, was of lasting significance, however, and prompted artists to use more refined techniques. The scene of the recapture of Buda Castle also occurs in many craft decorations, such as paintings on picture-clocks.
IV.1849-1870
1. Pest-Buda Cityscape
Pest developed within its existing borders during this period. The remaining empty spaces between the line of Szent István körút - Rottenbiller utca - Fiumei út - Haller utca and the Danube were gradually built up, and scattered villages merged into continuous units.
The absolutist economic policy in Hungary brought the general development of Hungarian industry, which had got under way in the 1840s, to an abrupt halt. Whole branches of industry (e.g. textiles) closed down, and major operations like the Valero Silk Factory had to stop production. On the other hand, the Austrian government promoted the food industry, particularly milling. The massive outlines and smoking chimneys of mills built in the north of Lipótváros in the 1850s, and later in Ferencváros and Újlak, were to be distinctive features of the cityscape for half a century.
The steam mills in Újlak survived, but in Lipótváros, the spread of residential areas meant that the steam mills had to be demolished, and only those on the Újpest riverside remained in operation.
Buda grew more slowly than Pest, but it also developed, particularly on the gentle slopes of Krisztinaváros, which were amenable to settlement. The gradual development of the steeper northern hills (Rózsadomb) only started at the end of the century.
A new facet of architecture in the city was Romanticism, which had already cropped up during the era of neo-classicism and taken its full form in Miklós Ybl's Fót Church (1844) when József Hild was building the Lipótváros Parish Church in the pure classical style - in 1851! The period of these two styles can therefore not be sharply distinguished. During its brief lifetime, the Romantic movement made a monumental addition to the Pest-Buda cityscape: construction of the Hermina Chapel to plans by József Hild had already started in the previous period (1842) but only finished in 1856. In 1852, the Hentzi Memorial was unveiled in Szent György tér in Buda Castle. Today this is known only from drawings by R. Alt and L. Rohbock and from some later photographs. The Krisztinaváros mansion of the Counts of Karátsonyi was built by József Pán between 1853 and 1856 (demolished in 1939). The Great Synagogue in Dohány utca was built to plans by L. Förster between 1854 and 1859 and the Pichler House on what is now Szent István tér between 1855 and 1857, to plans by Ferenc Wieser, who six years later built the fine spire of the Franciscan Church in Pest. Between 1857 and 1859, József Petschig built the enormous Buda High School - now the Toldy Gimnázium - which dominates the Buda skyline, and just when that was complete, work started on the biggest Romantic style building in Pest, the Vigadó, to plans by Frigyes Feszl. The new Vigadó was built on the foundations of its predecessor, Pollack Mihály's Neo-Classical building, which had been damaged in 1849 and later demolished. When the new Vigadó opened in 1865, the new building of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, designed by A. F. Stüler, was almost complete, forming the north side of Ferenc József (Roosevelt) tér and setting off the Neo-Classical Lloyd Mansion. Romanticism and Eclecticism were occasionally simultaneous phenomena.
The two most prominent buildings - in the literal sense - of the Buda cityscape also took shape in the Romantic Age, but not in that style. Construction of the Citadella on top of Gellért Hill started in 1851, followed shortly afterwards by reconstruction of the royal residence. The Citadella is characterless, smooth, even bleak, official "Nutzbau", whereas the Royal Palace is splendid Neo-Baroque "Prunkbau". To complete the mixture of styles of the 1850s, mention should be made of the east entrance of the Tunnel. It is a unique work which cannot be classed into any previous style, built by Adam Clark between 1853 and 1857. The combination of Doric columns and Ionic entablature in a curious but artistic design could fit into both the Neo-Classical and the Eclectic.
As capitalism took on momentum and the pressure of absolutism decreased in the few years before the Compromise, and completely lifted thereafter, Buda and Pest, soon to be officially known as Budapest, also saw an upsurge in cultural and particularly engineering activities. Some milestones: 1861. Opening of the Buda Népszínház (People's Theatre) ; 1865. Start of work on regulating the bank of the Danube on the Pest side ; 1866. Opening of the Horse-Drawn Tramway on 1 August ; 1867. Beginning of ferry service between Buda and Pest ; 1868. Opening of the Lipótmező Mental Hospital ; 1870. Opening of the Buda cable car on 2 March (Sikló). A new feature of the cityscape completed between 1860 and 1870, which remained intact until the Second World War was the row of buildings north and south of Ferenc József- (Roosevelt) tér, where the streets Széchenyi rakpart and Belgrád rakpart are now. Eclecticism took a firm hold in architecture. This was the style of the Buda Savings Bank, built in 1861 (Fő utca 2), the old House of Deputies in 1865 and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. These were followed by the Ferencváros Parish Church in 1867, the Vigadó tér headquarters of the First Hungarian General Insurance Company (around 1868) and the Hungária Hotel (1870-1871). Neo-classicism survived beyond its time in the 1850 reconstruction of the Angol királynő (Queen of England) Hotel and the building of the third story of Pest City Hall (1863). The ageing master Hild would no doubt have kept up the Neo-Classical idiom even if he had not been tied by existing features, as in the case of City Hall.
In 1867, the first accurate survey of Pest was made and became the basis for the city development plan, the large-scale map made by Sándor Halácsy between 1867 and 1872. This map laid out the Nagykörút (Great Boulevard), Sugár (Andrássy) út and many other streets and squares. In February 1870, the new building regulations for Pest were issued, and Act X of that year set up the Budapest Public Works Council, responsible for city planning and building control. The Public Works Council had a much wider remit than the former Improvement Commission, and this opened a new era in Budapest's development. Act XXXVI of 1872 finally set the unification of Buda and Pest into law, a step which the revolutionary government had resolved to take on 24 June 1849, but was frustrated by the failure of the War of Independence.
2. Pest-Buda Vedutas
Károly Klette's sepia of the Castle, made in June 1849, portrays the recapture of Buda Castle and shows the changes resulting from the siege. It almost repeats his siege picture, but with different proportions and framing extending beyond the Summer Theatre, the end-point of the siege picture. Its representation of the Castle and the ruined Royal Palace is, by virtue of both its subject and its nature, more authentic than either the painted or lithographed form of the siege picture, whose primary purpose was to show the action of the siege, the buildings serving only as a background (fig 48).
Simon Kölbl, who has already been mentioned in connection with the bombing of Újvásártér and the burning of the Royal Palace in May 1849, also drew the Palace in its ruined post-siege condition, shortly after the recapture (fig 49).
Miklós Barabás painted evocative details of Városmajor - including his own villa - in the 1850s.
In 1851, after a "silence" of a quarter of a century, Jacob Alt made a reappearance with four Pest-Buda vedutas, among other pictures, for an album Malerische Donaureise von Wien bis Pest-Ofen. published by J. Bermann of Vienna and lithographed by F. X. Sandmann. It is interesting to compare these with the drawings which the thirty-two-year-old artist made for Kunike's Donau-Ansichten. The lithographs display the changes which the intervening thirty years had wrought in painting and in the artist himself. Alt had developed a greater sureness of perspective and deeper tones, although the dryness which is so prominent in the older pictures is also, despite the richer tones, perceptible in the Malerische Donaureise vedutas. The subjects of his pictures for Bermann's album were: Budapest from the Tabán bank, Buda from the Ferencváros bank, with Gellért Hill and Castle Hill, Pest with Gellért Hill and the Royal Palace viewed from Viziváros, and the Óbuda Shipyard (fig 50). The lithographs were made in the press of J. Rauh, but the first veduta was printed by Reiffenstein and Rösch. The paintings on which the lithographs were based, judging by the form of the Royal Palace, were not made at the same time. Pest shows the Neo-Classical palace; Budapest the Neo-Baroque cupola of the south range.
The Sandmann Veduta, an overall view of the city dating from the previous period, reappeared around 1853, adjusted to take account of changes since that time. Sandmann only changed individual items of the image (Royal Palace, Vigadó), and even omitted some of these, such as the lions of the Chain Bridge (1850). The most apparent deletion is the pontoon bridge, whose traces can be detected on the lithograph.
In the same years, a pair of lithographed vedutas by F. X. Sandmann were published by J. Bermann in Vienna. One shows Pest-Buda from a northern viewpoint beside the Rózsadomb Chapel (destroyed in 1945), looking to the Tomb of Gül Baba and to the south of where Parliament now stands, with Castle Hill in the west. The other shows the city from the south, the northern slope of Gellért Hill. Both were printed by J. Stoufs (fig. 51).
In 1852 or 1853, Rudolf Alt's series of twenty-four lithographs, Festői megtekintések Budára és Pestre (Artistic Views of Buda and Pest) was published by Leopold Neumann of Vienna. Alt's original watercolours were lithographed by F. X. Sandmann, and most of them (nos 1, 2, 5, 6 and 8-24) were printed by Rauh. Number 3 was printed by J. Stoufs and number 4 by Reiffenstein and Rösch. Number 7 has no printer's mark. As already mentioned, the images are not all contemporaneous. They were made in the years between 1844 and 1852, as evidenced by the state of certain buildings. One is the "Queen of England Hotel" on prints 7 and 8. The former shows the pre-1849 state, and the latter the new-classical form following its reconstruction in 1850. The original watercolour of the print of the Óbuda Shipyard may be dated to 1848, and the representation of the Chain Bridge includes the lions, which were added to the bridge in 1850.
Festői megtekintések differs strikingly from Alt's Buda-Pest series. The 1845 series of 32 prints is dominated by landscapes, the first actually displaying the whole dual city (after Bartlett), while the later series (1852 or 1853) of 24 mainly shows smaller parts of the city (internal cityscapes). Twenty-one of the Buda-Pest series are landscapes, the remaining 11 individual urban features, while 15 of the later series show buildings and the remaining 9 are not landscapes per se so much as wide-angle vedutas, such as the Archduke Stephen Hotel, the Rakpiac, the Chain Bridge and the Royal Palace, and the Hercules steamboat and Gellért Hill. The titles of these prints also indicate the primacy of the relevant objects (fig. 62).
Rudolf Alt's later series includes subjects already covered in Buda-Pest of 1845, with some, but not many, changes. Several subjects are missing. He again draws Városház tér, Szénapiac ("Haymarket", now Kálvin tér) with the National Museum in the background, József tér, all three from almost the same viewpoint and framing, but none of the other Belváros squares - Sebestyén, Rózsa, Templom, Szervita or Ferenciek tér - or such prominent features of the Buda cityscape as Bomba (Batthány) tér or Dísz tér in the Castle in either series.
The artistic standard of Festői megtekintések. falls short of Buda-Pest except for the early prints in the series. One of them (number 4) showing the Chain Bridge from the Pest end is in all probability - despite the printed mark - not Alt's own work. In addition, this is the only picture in the series printed by Reiffenstein & Rösch rather than Rauh or Stoufs. The style of the drawing differs from the others in the series, and exactly corresponds to a drawing in the graphics collection of Kiscelli Museum entered in the inventory as the work of Alajos Fuchstaller, which the Museum acquired from the Artaria company of Vienna. By contrast with the more artistic, relaxed style of Buda-Pest, the pictures in the later series are, with a few exceptions, somewhat dry. This particularly shows up in comparisons with prints of the same subject (National Theatre, City Hall, National Museum). An overall evaluation comes out in favour of the earlier series (1845), and gives the impression that Alt's intention was partly to present what had been left out of the earlier series and partly to present new sights (Hentzi Memorial, Hercules steamboat), but without even an attempt at completeness, as the omission of squares so central to the cityscape proves. That the pictures were made at different times is inferred from the lack of dates on the second series, unlike the first series, which all carry the year 1845. There is no explanation for including pictures of the same subjects, unless Alt simply wished to publish some drawings that happened to be finished.
A few years later, the graphic artist Ludwig Rohbock of Nuremberg produced some brush drawn vedutas, copied on to steel plates by various German engravers, for János Hunfalvy's large historical-geographical work Magyarország és Erdély. (Hungary and Transylvania). This was published as a series of booklets, in two phases, in Darmstadt between 1856 and 1864 by printer and publisher G. G. Lange. Two volumes of the first phase are about Hungary, the first appearing in 1856 and the second in 1860.
Hunfalvy describes Budapest in the first volume of the first phase, with twenty-seven steel engraved illustrations, including the title page. While Magyarország és Erdély was still being produced, the text was reproduced separately in 1859 under the title Budapest és környéke (Budapest and Environs), published by the Pest company Lauffer and Stolp but again printed by Lange of Darmstadt. Most of the illustrations relating to Pest-Buda are the same in the latter volume, but there are only twenty-three of them: the title page is of course omitted, but so are the pictures of the Vigadó, the Academy and the Synagogue. The reason for this is that these three buildings had not yet been built in 1859. Under both titles, the artist responsible for the original drawings for the steel engravings is given as L. Rohbock, although the engravings of the Vigadó and the Academy were actually taken from pencil drawings by Lüders, and that of the Synagogue from a photograph.
The influence of Rudolf Alt's Festői megtekintések series is unmistakeable in L. Rohbock's drawings of corresponding subjects. Rohbock's drawings of Szent György tér with the Hentz memorial, of the National Museum and of Városház tér are almost copies of Alt's, with changes only the staffage and the illumination. The detail picture of the Vác graveyard shows the same tomb, if drawn from a lightly greater distance, as in the corresponding Buda-Pest picture. The Rohbock drawings, especially the landscapes, are produced in the mature Romantic style. This shows up most of all in the illumination. Strong light-and-shade effects and - in the images of Városház tér and the Buda end of the Chain Bridge - moonlight lend the pictures a romantic mood (fig. 53).
Rohbock, besides these books by János Hunfalvy, illustrated the three-volume Das Kaiserthum Oesterreich by Anton Ruthner, also for Lange of Darmstadt, published from 1871 onwards.
Although Óbuda and thus Margit Island were joined with Buda in 1850, neither of Hunfalvy's works carry vedutas of these two areas. One of Rohbock's illustrations does refer to Óbuda, but only in the title; its subject is floating mills "at Óbuda".
Coming in between the publication of Festői megtekintések and Magyarország és Erdély is a watercolour veduta by R. Alt of the Pest bank of the Danube, the Chain Bridge, Gellért Hill and the Royal Palace viewed from the Víziváros bank. Dated 1853, its steel-engraved copy by Oeder illustrates the book Die Donau von ihrem Ursprunge bis Pest by I. G. Kohl. That book was published by Lloyd Triestino, as was the veduta Kettenbrücke in Pest, which shows the Castle in the background. The viewpoint is the Dunasor, and one of the packages lying in the foreground bears the monogram LÖ, putting the attribution to L. Oeder (Öder) beyond doubt (fig. 54).
Two lithographed vedutas by J. N. M. Chapuy are known from the years following 1850. One is a view from Fishermen's Bastion, and the other - like the Alt-Oeder veduta from the Víziváros bank of the Danube.
Vinzenz Reim, of whom little else is known, produced two series of copperplate engravings in these years. One series was numbered 142-146 and the other 522-530. The numbers are written differently in the two series, but consistently within each. The lower-numbered series shows Pest-Buda in its 1840s state, certainly before 1847 (when the National Theatre burned down). The higher-numbered pictures are dated between 13 and 15 June 1851, and the images do indeed correspond to the city as it was in that year. The artist signed earlier series "I: V: R:" and the later "Vinzenz Reim", "Vin.Reim", "J. V. Reim" or simply "V: Reim". The identity of technique and the signatures on the series dated to 1851 imply that the abbreviation I: V: R: on the earlier series does indeed correspond to V. Reim. His other forename is unknown.
Rudolf Alt lithographed a large-format bird's-eye view of Pest-Buda from the north east for the series Vogelsperspectiv-Ansichten . in 1855. Alt's characteristically painstaking detail and his differentiated illumination effects make this veduta one of the most valuable examples not only of Alt's lithographs but of all lithographed views of Pest-Buda (fig. 55).
József Molnár drew Pest-Buda from the vineyard around the Rózsadomb Chapel in 1856, and Reiffenstein & Rösch published a lithograph of it in 1857. The "Veronika" Chapel, more properly the Chapel of the Holy Tomb in the Rózsadomb Calvary, was a popular subject for artists during the 1850s. (Sandmann, Rohbock, Wigand and others, and the terrace around the chapel presented a fine view of the city. One of a series of photographs made in 1860 was taken from here. (56. kép)
Between 1855 and 1858, Miklós Barabás added further pictures to those he had made of Városmajor. These show the as-yet unvaulted bridge across the Ördögárok stream, and woods. In 1856, he produced an oil-paint version of his 1852 aquarelle of his own villa (fig. 56). In the garden of the Neo-Classical villa, he also painted a portrait of the painter Mihály Kovács. A year earlier, he painted the Hydro which was built near his villa (on the site of what is now no. 64, Városmajor utca). The catalogue of the Csillag Collection mentions under number 334 a pencil drawing by Miklós Barabás and dates it to 1857. The catalogue illustration, however, clearly shows the year 1859. The drawing shows a classical-style, two-storey building with bushes and trees in the foreground and the caption "Buda 1859, in Városmajor". It cannot be identified with any drawing from either of these years in the list of Barabás' works.
Landscape pictures of the Buda Hills proliferated in the second half of the decade. Of particular interest is the work of Gusztáv Keleti, who lived on Svábhegy (hill) with the family of József Eötvös in the 1860s. He painted the Eötvös Villa in 1856, and some smaller pictures show the garden of the villa with members of the Eötvös family, the "Karthaus Cottage" at the bottom of the garden and other details. There is also a gossamer-fine pencil drawing of the view around the Szép Juhászné Inn from around 1861. From about the same time are a few aquarelles of lesser importance of Csillagvölgy (valley), the slopes and shady road of Normafa.
The Buda Hills landscapes category includes Béla Brechler's picture of the Fácán Inn, 1857 (fig. 58), and Albert Fáy's oil painting of the Kochmeister Villa in Budakeszi út (fig 59).259
Antal Ligeti's paintings of Budapest, despite forming a tiny fraction of his work, are among the finest landscape pictures of Budapest, and like those by Barabas, stand out in terms of both authenticity and artistic standard.
One of these is an oil painting, View of Budapest from the Buda Vineyard Slopes, which probably belongs among the vedutas by Rohbock, Sandmann, Wigand and János Molnár from similar viewpoints. The painting belonged to the Pest Art Society in 1853, and later formed part of the collection of Count István Károlyi.
In 1864, Ligeti painted a view of Budapest from the Ferencváros bank of the Danube, and refined it in 1887. It is a large veduta where the assured perspective and Ligeti's typically fine handling of colour lends a Mediterranean or oriental mood.
He must also have found it to be of significance, because he returned to the subject in 1865, and made a third and final variant in 1866. The 1864/1887 is in the Kiscelli Museum, and the 1866 variant passed from the collection of L. Milch to art dealer Sándor Donáth in 1942 and then to the Office of the Prime Minister. The versions differ little in form, but more so in colour.
Photography, whose development started to accelerate in the 1850s, naturally took its effect on painting, and even more so on reproduction graphics. József Borsos, Miklós Barabás and some minor painters temporarily or permanently changed over to photography. Although portraits formed the bulk of studios' output, city views started to be produced in the 1860s. Thereafter, graphic art declined in proportion to the advance of urban photography, and for a long time was confined almost exclusively to portraits.
Typical of this process are Słowikowski's coloured lithographs of the Academy, the Chain Bridge, the National Museum, the Chamber of Deputies and the courtyard of the Royal Palace (1866).
Ruthner's Das Kaisertum Oestereich (1878) has already been mentioned in connection with Rohbock, but its illustrations are from 1870 at the latest. Four of the great many pictures are of Budapest. The plate of the Rohbock-Kurz engraving Buda and Pest from Gellért Hill, from Hunfalvy's book, was modified to include changes to the cityscape which had appeared in the meantime (Academy, Coronation Mound) and appeared only with the German title Totalansicht von Pest- Ofen. The fact that the veduta shows the Coronation Mound, built in 1867, but not the row of buildings built during 1868 between today's Eötvös tér and Vigadó tér, dates the adaptation to exactly 1867. It is more likely, however, that the unknown engraver who adapted the plate made changes only to subsidiary features. The bank to the south of the Chain Bridge is on a slope in the original image, and in the adapted version the original hatching can clearly be made out behind the vertical lines representing the new state of the bank, which had been improved up in the meantime. Ruthner also took the etching View from the Castle Gate from Hunfalvy's work. The other two vedutas were appearing here for the first time: the steel engraving of Ferenc József Wharf and the Chain Bridge was made by Riegel, showing Pest from Albrecht (Hunyadi János) út, and Budapest Vigadó by Heisinger, showing the Vigadó face-on from the Danube with the "Phönix" building and the headquarters of the First Hungarian General Insurance Institute.
Rohbock-Fesca's etching Buda and Pest reappears unchanged but with the caption Pest és Buda. - Pesth und Ofen im Jahre 1860 in the imprint of Szelinaszki of Vienna.
This historical overview comes to an end with Georg Nissen's enormous (94 x 312 cm) tempera-on-cardboard painting of Pest-Buda from the Citadella, 1866-1867.
From the 1870s up to about the turn of the century, artistic representation of Budapest - apart from Ferenc Haske's steel engraving series of Margit Island (1873) - went through its nadir. The paintings of Gusztáv Keleti and Sándor Brodszky were really landscapes. In the late 1890s, representations of admirable authenticity appeared in the aquarelles and drawings of Tivadar Dörre, the oils and watercolours of Gyula Háry and the paintings and drawings of Róbert Nádler and Gergely Pörge, but true artistic merit only in the graphics of Lajos Rauscher and the paintings of László Menyánszky.