The Golden Temple and Akhal Takht, Amritsar
Gyula Tornai (Hungarian, 1861-1928)
oil on canvas, signed lower left
136 x 100 cm.
Footnotes:
One of the foremost Hungarian Orientalist painters, Gyula Tornai began his artistic education in the academies of Vienna, Munich and Budapest, where he studied under prominent artists such as Hans Makart and Gyula Benczúr. Tornai's style was heavily influenced by Makart's aestheticism and tonality known as Makartstil.

Tornai began his career painting numerous genre scenes. However, after his travels to more exotic locales, his choice of subjects changed dramatically. His early visit to Tangier, Morocco, in 1890–91, provided him with new motifs to explore. In 1900 he exhibited to great acclaim many of the works he completed abroad at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. In 1904, Tornai offered a significant number of works from these journeys for sale in Budapest in order to finance an artistic adventure to India and Japan. The sale of the paintings was a great success and in the summer of 1905 the artist set off for the Far East.

Upon his return from this two-year journey, the artist gathered together sixty large canvases and several studies and sent them on exhibition through several major European cities, including London, Paris, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig and finally Budapest in the autumn of 1909. Tornai often designed the frames for his paintings to complement the subject matter. His paintings are now in the Hungarian National Gallery.

This work was possibly exhibited among the approximately 70 artworks in the atist's solo exhibition Japan and India at the Goupil Gallery, London in 1907, and at the Hungarian National Fine Art Society's Art Gallery, Budapest, in 1909.

There are three known paintings of Amritsar by Tornai, two of which depict the Golden Temple. For another, similar view by Tornai, though smaller than our painting, and more tightly focused on the Temple and not including the buildings behind it, see Christie's, Art of the Islamic and Indian Worlds, 6th October 2009, lot 286.

In this view the artist has taken a vantage point looking at the Har Ki Pauri facade of the temple with a view of the Akal Takht in the background.