Design - back of a hand mirror

Sándor Nagy's drawing can be the illustration of vanity as a sin: it shows a young, fresh peasant girl looking at herself in a mirror, choosing a flowery twig as a decoration for her hair. Her locks, intertwined with the tendrils of the plant, create the decorative framework of the back of the mirror, emphasizing its slim shape. The sketch can hardly be dated, in spite of the fact that between 1900 and 1905 Sándor Nagy appeared often with his leatherwork illustrations on pages in the periodical Magyar Iparművészet (Hungarian Applied Arts). His designs were realized at first by Jenő Fischhof, later by Leo Belmonte, who was a companion and friend of the artist at the Julian Academy in France. The topic, the idyllic country genre was used fairly often on Sándor Nagy's works of art. The curves, however, show the direct effect of the years spent in Paris, and the marking - not containing the L letter of his wife, Laura Kriesch - also refer to the first two years of the twentieth century.