Antique Oil on Canvas Portrait of Janos Arany. Depicts the famous Hungarian author sitting at a desk writing in the midst of a lush garden spot. Text on bottom reads "János Arany wrote 'Two Portraits of Szondi' in 1856" in Hungarian. 

Overall Size: 59 1/4 x 33 in. 

Sight Size: 57 1/2 x 31 1/2 in. 

#4428 

János Arany was born on March 2nd, 1817 in Nagyszalonta, Hungary. He was the youngest of ten children, but because of tuberculosis only he and his older sister Sára, who was already married when he was born, lived beyond childhood. Arany learned to read and write early on, and was reportedly fluent in Hungarian and Latin by the age of 7. To help support his sick and destitute family, he began working as an associate teacher at the age of 14. In 1833 he attended the Reformed College of Debrecen where he studied German and French, though he quickly became tired of scholarly life and temporarily joined an acting troupe. Over the next five years he worked in Nagyszalonta, Debrecen, and Budapest as a teacher, a newspaper editor, and in various clerking positions. In 1840 he married Julianna Ercsey (1816-1885). They had two children: Julianna, whose early death by pneumonia devastated Arany, and László, who also became a poet and a collector of Hungarian folktales. 1847 he won the competition of the Kisfaludy Literary Society with his essay “Az elveszett alkotmány” (“The Lost Constitution”), which catapulted him into the national spotlight. He became known as one of the most important European poets, writers, translators, and journalists of his day, referred to as the “Hungarian Shakespeare.” He wrote more than 102 ballads that were translated into over 50 languages, as was his epic Toldi Trilogy. He became close friends with the liberal revolutionary writer Sándor Petőfi, whose death in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 had a great impact on him. Arany was elected a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1858, becoming its secretary-general in 1865, the same year he was elected director of the Kisfaludy Society. Tragically, 1865 was also the year Julianna died, and he took a hiatus from writing from then on until 1877, when he began working on his poetic cycle entitled Őszikék. It was substantially different from his previous works, concerning themes like elderliness, metaphysics, and the imminence of death. It remained unfinished when he died in Budapest on October 22nd, 1882.