page_title: Epreskert Art Colony
section_title: The Feszty-Jókai family
hierarchical_section_title: Epreskert Art Colony / The Feszty-Jókai family
caption_attribution_description: Magyar: Nagy Bella és Jókai Mór
context_page_description: Epreskert Art Colony was an artists' colony in Budapest in the last decades of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Among the artists who worked and lived there the most important were sculptors György Zala and Adolf Huszár, and painter Árpád Feszty.
context_section_description: The most important house in the Epreskert artists' colony was the small palace of the Feszty-Jókai family. Árpád Feszty, creator of the famous Feszty Cyclorama acquired the parcel on the corner of Bajza and Kmety Streets in 1890. He built a small palace in Venetian Gothic style according to his own plans. The façade was decorated with reliefs by Gyula Donáth and György Zala (both artists lived in the colony) together with the coat-of-arms of the Feszty and Jókai families. Feszti had a two storeys high studio.
  The celebrated writer, Mór Jókai was stepfather of Feszty's wife, Róza Jókai. He was a widower who chose to live with the young couple. Jókai occupied the upper floor while the Fesztys lived downstairs. Róza Jókai's salon soon became the center of the artistic and social life of Budapest. Ministers, politicians, actors and actresses, curators, writers and painters gathered regularly in the small Venetian palace on Bajza Street. From the older generation Kálmán Tisza and Kálmán Mikszáth were regular visitors at Jókai upstairs. In 1894 Jókai celebrated his golden jubilee as an author in the palace.
  The golden era of the palace ended with the biggest social scandal of the decade. In 1899 the 74-year-old Jókai suddenly married a young actress, Bella Nagy. The public and the Fesztys were equally shocked. Jókai left the palace and the family got mixed up in a public debate. In the next few years Feszty ran into a huge debt and was forced to sell the house in 1907.
  The palace was bought by the Petőfi Literary Society, which converted it into a literary museum (forerunner of the current Petőfi Museum of Literature). It was damaged in World War II but was rebuilt in 1947. After the museum moved out the palace was converted into storage place for a natural history collection, and later an atelier for sculptor Pál Kő in the 1990s.
caption: Jókai with his young wife, Bella Nagy.
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