Night Scene in Capri
Artist information
Name Marcel Ronay (1910-1998)
Born Budapest, Hungary
Died England
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Find out more about this artist
Ronay was born in Budapest, one of five children. His father was a Romanian Jew and his mother a Catholic from Hungary. In 1915 the family moved first to Berlin and then, after a brief return to Budapest (1918), they settled in Vienna (1922). In 1928, Ronay was invited to study at the Kunstgewerbe Schule under Professor Eugene Steinhof. In 1931 Ronay won the State Prize for Painting (1931) for Monks and Nuns, a work depicting a high profile orgy that took place in Austria. The award was subsequently revoked due to the content. Ronay spent most of his life working in the family business, designing and decorating porcelain jewellery. Most of his artwork was completed before he came to in England in 1936. In England he established 'Ronay Studios' in St Peter's Square, Hammersmith where he held an exhibition in 1943. The following year (1944) Ronay married Czech-born Anita Jellinek in Chiswick. They had a son, Andrew and a daughter, Barbara. During the 1950s and 1960s Ronay mostly painted landscapes of the English counryside but in the 1970s reverted to carving. Ronay's work has been exhibited at the Vienna Secession and The Royal Academy of Arts, London. Ronay died in 1998.
Object Details
Date 1931
Object type painting
Medium oil on canvas
Materials and techniques oil (medium) canvas (support)
Unframed 74 x 39.5 cm
Framed 86.5 x 75.9 cm
Signed and dated (lower left): M Ro 31
Acquisition presented by the artist 1986
Accession number 1987-335
Display status not on display
Selected exhibition history
2018
Out of Austria: Austrian emigre artists to the UK
Ben Uri Gallery and Museum
Literature
Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Camden (London: The Public Catalogue Foundation, 2013); The Life and Works of Marcel Ronay, exhibition catalogue (Surrey, 2010); Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner, eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), p. 87.