Bertalan Sz?kely

(b Kolozsv?r [now Cluj-Napoca, Romania], 8 May 1835; d M?ty?sf?ld [now part of Budapest], 21 Aug 1910). Hungarian painter and illustrator. He studied drawing in Kolozsv?r and in the early 1850s was taught by Carl Rahl and Nepomuk Geiger at the Akademie in Vienna, where he also briefly attended Ferdinand Waldm?ller's classes. After returning to Hungary, he painted portraits and also signboards for shops and inns in Transylvania (now in Romania) and Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic). From 1859 he studied at the Munich Akademie under Wilhelm von Kaulbach and Karl Theodor von Piloty. As Sz?kely's sketches (Budapest, N.G.) reveal, he was already a mature artist on his arrival in Munich, where he produced his first important history painting, the Discovery of the Corpse of King Louis II, and also a Self-portrait (both 1860; Budapest, N.G.), the latter being one of his most striking works. In 1859 he painted a series of scenes based on the life of Caravaggio and in 1863 a historical secco in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich. Sz?kely then went on a study tour of France, Flanders and the Netherlands and, on his return to Hungary, began painting portraits as a means of supporting his family.

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