Birth of Bacchus

Inscriptions

Signed: C. Markó 1826

Provenance

Offered for sale, Pisko, Vienna, Apr. 15, 1913, lot 64a, as Ideale Landschaft. Sold, Pisko, Vienna, Nov. 20, 1913, lot 79 as Die Geburt des Dionysos [annotated sale catalogue; in curatorial object file]. Count Rudolf Kinsky of Wchinitz and Tettau (later Rudolf, 9th Prince Kinsky of Wchinitz and Tettau, 1859-1930); his sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, Apr. 2, 1914, lot 797 as Ideale Landschaft, Geburt des Bacchus. Sold, Vienna, Dorotheum, Mar. 11-13, 1925, lot 47 as Ideale Landschaft for 3,000 österreicher Schillinge. Kzrisch collection, before 1926[this and the following according to Vienna 1926]. Private collection, Vienna; sold, Galerie Fromme, Vienna, Mar. 16, 1926, lot 41. Sold, Sotheby’s London, June 19, 1985, lot 136 for £3,300 to Nicolas M. Salgo, New York (d. 2005) [invoice from Sotheby’s London, June 29, 1985; copy in curatorial object file]; The Salgo Trust for Education; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2022.

Exhibition history

New Brunswick, NJ, American Hungarian Foundation, Two Hundred Years of Hungarian Painting, May 20–Oct. 14, 1990, no cat. New Brunswick, NJ, Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation, ‘Everywhere a Foreigner and Yet Nowhere a Stranger’: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Artists from The Salgo Trust for Education, Nov. 23, 2003–Sep. 12, 2004, no.3. New Brunswick, NJ, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, The Magyar Imagination: Selections from the Salgo Trust Collection of Hungarian Art, Dec. 8, 2007–Mar. 30, 2008, no cat.

Publications

Pogány Ö. Gáborné, “Id. Markó Károly művei,” in Művészettörténeti Dokumentációs Központ Évkönyve 1854–1955 (Budapest, 1957), 369. Nicolas M. Salgó, Two Centuries of Hungarian Painters, 1820–1970: A Catalogue of the Nicolas Salgó Collection (Washington, D.C.: American University Press, 1991), 18, cat. 2. ‘Everywhere a Foreigner and Yet Nowhere a Stranger’: The Work of Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Artists from The Salgo Trust for Education, exh. cat. (New Brunswick, NJ: Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation, 2003), np. cat. 3.

Quick Overview

Artist: Károly Markó Sr. (Hungarian, 1793-1860)
Date: 1826 (?)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 55 × 50 cm (21 1/2 × 20 1/2 in.); Framed: 79.1 × 73.1 × 7 cm (31 1/8 × 28 3/4 × 2 3/4 in.)
Type: Painting
Classification: painting
Style: 19th century
Place: Hungary
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Credit line: Gift of The Salgo Trust for Education
Accession no.: 2022.366

Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.