The establishment of the Historical Gallery in 1884, independent of the National Museum and part of the National Gallery, was necessitated by the growing academic interest in history. Károly Pulszky, the brain behind the concept, who specified the task of the collection in laying the foundations for authentic historical reconstruction, by way of collecting pictorial documents of historical value and authenticity. The initial artefacts of the Picture Gallery were selected from the Art Gallery of the National Museum and the Széchényi Library's collection of engravings. In 1934, the collection, which belonged to the Museum of Fine Arts at the beginning of the 20th century, was annexed to the Hungarian National Museum, of which it has been a department ever since. The Historical Gallery is our public collection dedicated for collecting and processing illustrated sources of Hungarian and universal history.
Visual representations (paintings, drawings, engravings) which are important for their content, primarily because of the historical subject matter depicted, are called pictorial sources. In addition to portraits of Hungarian historical figures, pictures of events and views of places, this category also includes depictions which present a characteristic detail of Hungarian cultural history in a realistic way. Authenticity is a decisive criterion for collecting. Besides works by Hungarian masters, our collection also includes Hungarian-related works by foreign artists.
