Jozsef Borsos (1821 – 1883) was a Hungarian portrait painter and photographer.
He is at once one of the most well-known and most unjustly forgotten Hungarian painters of the 19th century: while some of his emblematic works are often reproduced and popular, the whole of his oeuvre is relatively unknown to the public. This may partly be due to the fact that Borsos had lived and worked in Vienna for twenty years (from 1840s to 1861), and thus became somewhat isolated from Hungarian art life. He studied in Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller’s private school, and was also influenced by Friedrich von Amerling, adopting a rich, graceful, masterly manner of painting. He was popular with the Viennese society, and received commissions to paint portraits of members of the high aristocracy, e. g. Prince Paul Esterházy, while the Emperor also purchased a still life and a genre piece of his. The recognition was not ephemeral: the quality of his artistic output makes him one of the most important Hungarian Biedermeier artists even in retrospect.
After giving up painting and returning to Hungary, he became a successful photographer.
Source: Hungarian National Gallery.
