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This large canvas, the masterwork of Mészöly, was made in Munich. It was commissioned by Ágost Trefort, Minister of Culture, in 1874 for the Hungarian National Museum.
Art historians often connect Mészöly's name with that of Camille Corot and by the beginning of this century he was labelled "the Hungarian Corot". Indeed, Mészöly's art is related to Corot's and the later French plein air painters. With their mother-of-pearl, hazy colours, the pictorial values of representation and their intimate mood, they are quite reminiscent of the great lyricist among nineteenth-century French landscape painters. No wonder that foreign art dealers sold Mészöly's pictures signed with Corot's name to American collectors. There was even a big scandal - the best known among several - when, in the early 1900s a poor-quality, slightly modified copy of Mészöly's Fishermen's Hut on Lake Balaton was exhibited at the Modern Art Gallery of Dublin as an original Corot.
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