Painter. During his law studies in Pest, he took up painting at Miklós Barabás. He was Görgey's war drawer during the war of independence. From 1851, he was C. Rahl's student in Vienna and from 1855 he studied in Paris.

After returning to Hungary, he was very successful in all genres of painting. He spent three years in Rome from 1857. "Nyáry and Pekry's Arrest", his first significant work (1858) was followed by a series of historic compositions on suppression ("The Battle of Mohács", 1855, "King Imre Arrests his Rebellion Brother", 1857, "Recruiting before 1848", 1861, "János Vitéz Teaches János Hunyadi the Latin Language", 1882, "Péter Pázmány Dictates", 1885, etc.).

He settled down in Pest in 1860. From 1864, he worked on the frescoes of the Vigadó in Pest together with Károly Lotz, which made him a painter highly appreciated. "Fata Morgana" brought him a lot of seccess in the Salon in Paris. He lived in Italy in the 1880s.

First a guard of the Gallery of the Hungarian National Museum from 1890 onwards, he became the director of the National Gallery in 1896 for a short time. Besides historic pictures, he painted portraits ("Franz Liszt", "Ferenc Deák", "Mrs. Polyxena Hampel-Pulszky", "Self-Portrait", "The Sun and the Fata Morgana's Love ", 1866, "Priamus with the Corpse of Hector", 1877, "A Scene from 'The Tragedy of Man'"), pictures on ecclesiastical history ("Mater Dolorosa", "St. Ceciliy", 1868), genre pictures ("Italian Genre Picture", 1860, "The Fortune Teller", 1861, "Stella", 1863, and "Bathing Girl", 1880) and frescoes in academic style (Vigadó, the Foyer of the Opera, etc.).