The garden of the magician

It decisively determined Gulácsy’s approach that he spent nearly thirteen years in Italy with short interruptions between 1902 and 1915. The works painted at the beginning of the century sidplay the fertilizing effect of the English Pre-Raphaelites int he first place. Int he female figure of this picture Dante Gabriel Rosetti’s model of a fine-cut profile is reborn – her features appear in other works by Gulácsy as well. The couple engrossed in one another is surrounded by natural setting, a garden of a mystic atmosphere. The flowers unfolding from the rampant vegetation and the swirling ribbon of smoke at the right suggest roses and the fragrance of incense. Int he wake of French symbolist poetry Gulácsy often appealed to various senses of the spectator, eliciting different sensations. The reddish overall tone mirrors the pantheistic unity of man and nature. The picture also formulates he existential experience of seccesionism, the longing for an idyllic life. His friend the poet Gyula Juhász wrote about Gulácsy: „…he was very far from the world that kept teeming and whirling around him.” The painting was first shown to the public with the title Enchantment int he Gulácsy exhibition at the Uránia art gallery in March 1907.