The grave of Pál Szinyei Merse in Jernye

Szinyei Merse Pál, painter; 1845, Szinyéújfalu - 1920, Jernye; ; A scion of an old noble family, his father was the vice-governor and then the lord governor of Sáros County, who supported Szinyei Merse Pál's intention to become a painter. In 1864, he enrolled at the Munich Academy, where Strähuber, Anschütz, and then Sándor Wagner were his masters, but he soon came into contact with the excellent teacher Piloty, whose student he became in 1868. However, from his masters he only learned solid drawing skills and the rules of composition, he never adopted the academic formal language. His directness, the individual voice of his art, and the richness of color were already evident in his youthful works. He studied with Leibl at Piloty, and at the Munich exhibitions he encountered the works of Courbet. His friendship with Böcklin in 1872 also attracted him towards the richness of colours. His individual formal language had already developed in 1869 in his fresh, airy sketches of Clothes Drying and Swing, which were the first masterpieces of Hungarian plein air painting (both in the Hungarian National Gallery). In the following years he painted his first significant work, the lyrical Lovers (Hungarian National Gallery), and it was then that he began to work on the sketches for his main work, one of the most beautiful Hungarian paintings, Majális, which took its final form in 1873 (Hungarian National Gallery). However, his brilliantly colourful, cheerful plein air painting, which also occupied a very important place in European painting, did not achieve the success it deserved, and its creator, losing heart, stopped working regularly. He returned home to his estate in Jernyei, got married, started farming and painted more for pleasure. Meanwhile, some masterpieces emerged from under his brush, such as the painting of his wife, Woman in a Purple Dress (1874, Hungarian National Gallery). In 1882, he traveled to Vienna and began painting more seriously again. At that time, he painted the painting, The Lapwing, which was less significant than The Mayflower, but evoked its theme. This also received unfavorable reviews, which increasingly discouraged him. His divorce in 1887 worsened his mood even further. He only exhibited again in 1894 (Melting Snow, Poppy Field). Finally, at the 1896 exhibition, The Mayflower was a resounding success, and the young artists of Nagybánya recognized it as the precursor of their aspirations. The creator of Hungarian plein air painting, the first great representative of modern Hungarian painting, discovered the problem of the pictorial representation of the open air and sunlight at the same time as his Western European contemporaries and created his richly colored, realistic landscape and portrait art. He was elected a representative in 1897. In 1905, he organized a highly successful collective exhibition at the National Salon, and in the same year he was appointed director of the Academy of Fine Arts, a position he held until his death. In 1907, he participated in the founding of the Hungarian Impressionist and Naturalist Circle (MIÉNK), and he exhibited several of his paintings at foreign exhibitions, where he also achieved decisive success. In the spring of 1919, he retired to Jernyé due to illness.