The history of 3 Kossuth Street did not end with the closure of the Landerer-Heckenast printing house, but the opening of the Kammon Café in 1852 marked the beginning of a chapter in the artistic life of the building that - with a little exaggeration - is still going on today.
The restaurant, run by Flórián Cammon, was initially a student hostel, but it became important after the Kiegyezés, when life within its walls laid the foundations for the later tradition of café culture, the key word being diversity. On the one hand, the café became a meeting place for several generations and, on the other, it was the first place where artists, writers and others were present together. In this way the Kammon could become a stage for the flowering of culture and the arts - and this would be an important moment in the story of how cafés would later become the centre of cultural life. A contemporary article sums up the café life on the site of our gallery: 'The standard of its visitors is high...'
But our gallery building was not only filled with art and social life, it was also a tenement house, and its inhabitants were not just anybody. For example, the house was home to painter and lithographer Jakab Marastoni, founder of the First Hungarian Academy of Painting. Born in Venice, Jacopo Antonio Marastoni settled in Budapest after Vienna and soon became one of the most sought-after portrait painters of his time. In 1846, he founded the aforementioned Academy, one of the first to do so, and Károly Lotz and Mihály Zichy, for example, began their studies in the "walls" of Ferenc Deák Street.
Antal Szkalnitzy, an important architect of the time, also lived in the tenement building at 3 Kossuth Street. His name is associated with buildings that defined the unified Budapest, such as the Oktogon houses, the University Library, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the National Theatre.
In 1873 our building changed hands again. The new owner was Count János Pálffy of Erdődi, a patron and art collector. The size of Pálffy's collection is shown by the fact that the Museum of Fine Arts owes 178 paintings to him. The landowner's palaces in Budapest, Vienna and Bratislava, as well as his country mansions, were full of works of art. It was thanks to his death and his will that the museum later acquired the paintings, which were the most important addition to the institution after the Esterházy Picture Gallery. In 1910, the publication Hungarian Applied Art wrote about him in this way: "If only the God of the Hungarians would give the country many János Pálffy!"
But János Pálffy is not the only art collector associated with the building. In the 1920s and 1930s, the house was home to Sándor Donáth, a well-known art dealer and collector, and thus not only he, but also the paintings of Munkácsy, László Paál and Rippl-Rónai moved into 3 Kossuth utca. Donat opened the predecessor of our gallery in the building. Although he started as a maker of cheese pipes, as can be seen from the advertisements of the time, he later became known as an art dealer.
A contemporary newspaper article reports the robbery of an antique shop at 3 Kossuth Street. It says that art treasures worth 10,000 pence were on display in the shop window, which was robbed in 1932 by contemporary criminals dressed as window cleaners. Donat, an art collector, also played sport, swimming, athletics and was part of the founder of MTK.
So our gallery is not without a past, the love of art has long permeated the building in which we have been welcoming you for 10 years!
HU