A magyar politikai-kulturális karikatúra ismeretlen kezdete: Petrichevich Horváth János rajzmappái
Authors: Kaszap-Asztalos Emese 
Published: March 2018

In the library of the Romanian Academy of Sciences in Kolozsvár there are four albums containing hundreds of caricatures, genre and milieu drawings, political portraits by János Petrichevich Horváth from the period between 1824 and 1864. The albums comprise several so-far little known and unpublished depictions of actors of the age such as István Széchenyi, Miklós Wesselényi, László Teleki, Sándor Teleki, Ferdinand V, Metternich or Emperor Francis Joseph, as well as the less widely known figures of the Transylvanian public scene and nobility, and officers of the imperial army. The set of over five hundred drawings, some only rough sketches, are not only intriguing in terms of iconography but at the same time have intrinsic artistic value as well. The main asset of the albums is the representation of the 19th century small world of ordinary people besides the pictures of representative personages. In addition to unusual themes the artist also challenges some taboos and depicts the abuses of power showing some infamous aspects of the life of the imperial forces, the aristocracy or the clergy.

By occupation, Transylvanian-born János Petrichevich Horváth was a high-ranking officer in the imperial army, and as such he was a committed defender of the feudal social structure and the monarchy, but as an amateur graphic artist he revealed quite a different side of his activities. Although there is no information on his regular artistic training, his works suggest a trained draughtsman mastering refined drawing techniques, with a sense of colour, careful spatial composition and exact anatomical rendering, correct perspective view and sensitive characterization.

The most remarkable works in the albums are the caricatures, which makes scholarship revise the beginnings and history of the genre in Hungary. Though the first half of the 19th century is regarded as a period of rudimentary attempts in Hungarian caricature history, the unfolding of the genre being dated to after the Compromise (1867), the albums of János Petrichevich Horváth render the Hungarian manifestations of the genre commensurable with the European crop of the genre at an earlier date. Of course, Hungarian art struggling with several problems of (self) definition, institutionalization, lack of infrastructure, etc. did not have a James Gillray (1756-1815) regarded as the “father of political caricature” or an Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) yet, but Petrichevich’s works do add several hues to the general tone of backwardness. As a conspicuous analogy, most caricatures of Gillray mock George III whose mental illness was caused by porphyria, Daumier’s most famous caricatures are of the pear-headed Louis Philippe I, and Petrichevich’s several caricature sketches depict the hydrocephalic Ferdinand V. Thus his works can be taken as the start of Hungarian political and cultural caricature whose artistic rendering and embarrassing sincerity project to us a different picture of the Reform Age clad so far in the veil of the golden age or of the customary image of the imperial forces as devilish impostors.