Erotic drawing by Mihaly Zichy

Erotic drawing by Mihaly Zichy

Artist: Mihaly von Zichy (1827-1906)


Mihaly von Zichy was a Hungarian painter.
Zichy was born the son of landed gentry. In 1842, he took in Pest on a law degree. In parallel, he studied with the Italian Jacopo Marastoni painting. In 1844 he moved to Vienna to study with Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller.
Although his work did not go unnoticed, he lacked the financial livelihood. In 1847 he turned to St. Petersburg, where Tsar Nicholas I hired him as a private tutor for his daughter Helene. In 1849 he started his own business and created his greatest works. Tsar Alexander II Zichy appointed court painter in 1859. During this period numerous paintings important Russian courtiers. He has been married to Countess Elizabeth Vratislav Mitrovitz to 1865. They had a daughter, for Mihaly has never taken care of. Their marriage has been terminated by the 1867th
In 1874 he left Russia in the direction of Paris. There, he became president of the Hungarian Association and others painted the picture courtesan for the main character of Émile Zola's novel Nana. He returned several times to execute artistic jobs back to Russia. The last decades of his life were spent at the court of Tsar Alexander III ..
Of honors, there are today in the Zala one artist museum dedicated Zichy. In Budapest, the Zichy Mihály utca was named after him.

His work is known today primarily for his non-judgmental treatment of the subject "physical love". Zichy's emphasis lay in the representation of the fantastic, supernatural and gruesome. In drawings, watercolors and oil paintings, he has preferred to treat materials whose mystical, transcendental and speculative tendency eludes representation through painting. His coloristic treatment is at the service of his eccentric inventions. Zichy is one of the most important artists of Hungarian romanticism. He also worked as a graphic designer and created next to erotic depictions illustrations to contemporary Hungarian writer, as the tragedy of humanity by Imre Madách (1887) or ballads of János Arany (1894-98).