Katarína Beňová
Slovak Tinkers as Social Nomads and Their Depiction in 19th Century Art
Tinkers were social nomads, a mobile community that moved through the countryside to make a living and to pursue their specific occupation. They had their own traditional clothing and tools that distinguished them from other vagrants on the streets of towns. The tinkers' designs were closely tied to the mountainous regions of Upper Hungary, but gradually they spread throughout Europe, where their way of work took them. The tinker is usually depicted as a poor individualist, a wanderer, or even a tramp. The earliest graphic depictions date from the third quarter of the 18th century. Gradually, albums and series of costume or type studies called Trachtenbilder or Trachtenblätter became popular. Apart from depicting the tinker in the context of individual folk types, this craftsman became a symbol of the typical Slovak wandering for work. It is therefore not surprising that we also find depictions of tinkers in works by representatives of nationally oriented art in our environment, such as P. M. Bohúň and J. B. Klemens. Surprisingly, the theme of the tinker was also relatively often reflected by authors outside Upper Hungary, especially in areas where tinkers wandered through the countryside in search of livelihood (e.g. by Czech authors such as J. Čermák, J. Navrátil, S. Pinkas and others, or Hungarian authors M. Barabás, J. Benczúr, J. Molnár, L. Horovitz). Painter L. Mednyánszky was fascinated by the strong, masculine types of young men whom he depicted in his drawings and who also served as the basis for some of his figurative subjects. He himself led the life of a wanderer, a nomad who moved not only along the streets and among the scum, but also in the aristocratic salons to which he belonged by origin. In the context of realistic and luminist painting and drawing, the theme of the tinker is represented in the work of T. Zemplényi, a painter from Prešov, Slovakia. Painter Cyril Kutlík, who played an important role in the establishment of academic art education in Serbia, made a painting with the theme of a seated tinker, concentrating on repairing kitchen utensils, in 1896, at the time of the millennium celebrations.
Keywords: tinker - social nomadism - Upper Hungary - costume studies - tinkers in 19th century art - Ladislav Mednyánszky
design by Bedřich Vémola
