Szinyei Merse
The artist who had an unbiased and humble approach to landscape attempted to create a clear and simple composition. He soon found diagonal composition which best suited his character and gestures, which kept on returning in a lot of his works in a number of variations. The picture shows again a slope, as in Picnic in May, or Thawing Snow. As another compositional bravura, the artist placed figures walking uphill in the focus of a semi-circle of flowers. However small those figures are, they dominate the picture.
Szinyei Merse started painting landscapes with poppies in 1895 which continued the colours of his youth. Like Monet of the impressionists, Szinyei Merse also noticed that the contrast of red and green in the field full of poppies produced a fantastic vibration in the eyes of passers-by. The vibrating air around landscape and figures in the sunshine does not allow details to unfold. Thus, all elements of the picture merge with the harmony of uniform vision in spite of its intensive colours. The picture with poppies painted in Jernye in 1902 is the subtlest of all versions and expresses best what the Hungarian landscape looked like on a bright summer day.
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