Plaque

The exact attribution of the large plaquette bought from a private collector in 2009 was facilitated by the inscription (“To Kamill Fittler, with affection – The Steindl guild , 16 Dec. 1905”) and the signature (the initials MRG). The plaquette adorned with a laurel wreath belongs to the Museum of Applied Arts’pool of collected works not only on account of its creator’s oeuvre and its genre, which unquestionably belonged to decorative arts at the turn of the century, but also because of its theme. An associate of the Museum of Applied Arts and editor of the periodical Magyar Iparmuvészet [Hungarian Decorative Arts] Kamill Fittler (1853–1910) was a prominent personage of the art life of his age. He was a member of the Steindl Guild rallying the adherents and admirers of Imre Steindl (as a society of artists and lay people patronizing art), who held their informal regular gatherings in their headquarters of two rooms in today’s Semmelweis street, attended by noted artists. There are very few Art Nouveau plaques in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, and only one by Géza Maróti (1875–1941), although over twenty of his plaques are reproduced in Medaillen- und Plakettenkunst in Ungarn by Lajos Huszár and Béla Procopius (Budapest, 1932). This pieceis not among them.