As famous in Hungary as he is little known abroad, Károly Ferenczy (1862–1917) is a major figure of modernity in Central Europe. His themes and style establish him as one of the great painters of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, of equal stature to Joaquín Sorolla or John Singer Sargent.

Through this first French retrospective, the Petit Palais aims to highlight his fundamental originality. Neither quite Naturalist, nor Symbolist, nor Impressionist, nor Nabi, but a bit of all of these at once, he embodies the cosmopolitanism of the fin-de-siècle across the full breadth of his visual culture and art. A founding member of an artists’ colony nestled in the heart of the Hungarian countryside at Nagybánya, Ferenczy made plein-air painting his emblematic practice.

With nearly 140 works, the exhibition highlights the many facets of the artist’s approach—landscapes, portraits, family scenes, biblical subjects, nudes —and reveals Károly Ferenczy’s fundamental role in the emergence of a truly modern artistic school in Hungary. The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery.