March 18, 1887

Róbert Berény  (March 18, 1887  to September 10, 1953) was an Hungarian painter. He was part of a group of fellow Hungarian artists who called themselves "The Eight", and one of whom described their flourishing in the early 20th century in these later words:

It fills me with happiness to know that my youth coincided with that memorable period in intellectual development, when not only in Europe but also in Hungary, those seeking new, better things in literature, music, painting, science, politics and social life were carried by vibrant, seething currents.

Along with people like Bartok, Bereny was part of that wave. One of his canvases much later played a part in an American movie. The pairing was "Sleeping Lady with Black Vase" and the movie was "Stuart Little." Here is how the howtogeek.com website fills out this improbable drama:

In 2009, art historian Gergely Barki was watching the 1999 film adaptation of E.B. White’s classic 1945 children’s book Stuart Little with his daughter Lola when he noticed something that thoroughly startled him. Hanging over the mantle of the protagonist’s apartment in the film was the long lost painting Sleeping Lady With a Black Vase by Hungarian painter Róbert Berény.

While someone with less knowledge of the painting might assume that it was a reprint, Barki had a very strong hunch it was the original painting, a painting which had been missing since 1928. After numerous emails to anyone and everyone he could find who had worked on the movie, eventually Barki got in contact with an assistant set designer who not only had the story of the painting, but had the painting itself hanging on her bedroom wall.

She’d purchased the painting for $500 in an antique store to add a little elegant decor to the Little’s apartment in the film. After filming, she liked the painting so much that she turned around and bought it off the company for her own collection. After Barki helped confirm the authenticity of the painting, the set designer sold the painting to a private collector who returned the painting to Hungary for auction

Barki was an Hungarian art historian; he had, according to one account, only seen the painting he identified once before, in a black and white picture in a catalog. Here is a newer picture of that canvas.





And here is a Berenyi which would not turn up in a movie about a mouse:  Still life with cat (1929).