What was the full name of the person who said it would take him two years to complete the painting?
In the early 1890s, Hungarian officials announced plans for a Budapest Millennium Exhibition to be held in 1896; it was intended to mark the 1,000th anniversary of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin, reaffirm Hungary's "national and territorial legitimacy" and the Hungarian people's "natural and historical right in the areas they inhabited." The Exhibition was to be held at Budapest's City Park. Exhibits were to be divided into twelve distinct areas, one of which was visual art. The showpiece of the art exhibit was The Conquest of the Carpathian Basin, a painting by Hungary's foremost history painter, Mihály Munkácsy, that was located in the Hungarian Parliament Building. Several pavilions displaying the cultural and industrial achievements of non-Hungarians living in the Hungarian-administered territories of Austria-Hungary were also built, including one for the Serbs.In the spring of 1895, on the orders of the Patriarch of Karlovci, Georgije I, the Congress Board of Sremski Karlovci commissioned the young realist Paja Jovanović to paint Migration of the Serbs, intending for it to be displayed as part of the Serb pavilion. Georgije had originally approached the artist Uroš Predić, but Predić said it would take him two years to complete the painting. Jovanović assured the Patriarch that he could finish the work in eight months. The painting was one of two works that Jovanović was hired to paint for the Exhibition, the other being the Vršac triptych, which was commissioned by the Vršac city council.In the eyes of the clergy, Migration of the Serbs would help legitimize Serb claims to religious autonomy and partial self-administration in Austria-Hungary. The official Church narrative held that Leopold had requested that the Serbs of Kosovo, Macedonia and the Sandžak settle along the Ottoman–Habsburg frontier to create a buffer against further Ottoman encroachment, and Church officials intended for Jovanović's painting to reflect this view. Hence, the painting had significant political implications. Habsburg Serbs asserted that the agreement between Arsenije and Leopold legitimized their claim to the lands they inhabited. Croatian nationalists decried the Serbs as "uninvited guests" who only acquired Leopold's pledge of autonomy after they had migrated to the Habsburg lands. Migration of the Serbs was thus intended to challenge the historical and political narratives being forwarded by the Croatian and Hungarian painters whose works were also going to be displayed.
Uroš Predić