Methodology

The György Rauscher Archive is a digital catalogue of the Hungarian painter Rauscher György (in Western order Gyorgy Rauscher; in German-language sources Georg Rauscher; born Dorog, 29 April 1902; died Komárom, 3 October 1930), a painter of the new objectivity (új tárgyiasság / Neue Sachlichkeit) and of the gáláns világ (‘gallant world’), the art deco society portraiture of his Berlin years.

Számadó Emese’s 2019 catalogue is the archive’s principal published reference. The archive follows it and presents the documented oeuvre, together with further works that have surfaced since, in a navigable, citable digital form.

A work enters the catalogue only when at least one documentary test is met, set out below. The documented oeuvre comprises the 118 works of the 1935 Nemzeti Szalon estate catalogue together with more than two dozen further documented works.

This page states the standard of proof, the sources it draws on, and the status taxonomy that govern every record.

Scope

The archive documents György Rauscher’s works: paintings, drawings, watercolours, lithographs, and his Berlin printed-work output for Scherl Verlag and others.

It also documents his exhibition history, his biography, the period press that recorded him, the modern scholarship that recovered him, and the family-stewarded primary sources that survive.

It excludes works attributed to other bearers of the surname (the page /name-disambiguation separates them), non-art Rauscher family material, and claims resting on rumour rather than on a primary source or established scholarship. Where a claim cannot yet be verified, it is flagged as such rather than asserted.

Sources and their roles

The archive draws on the kinds of source listed below, grouped by the role each plays in the record. Contemporary primary documentation establishes facts; the scholarship documents and interprets them; institutional and auction records locate works and fix their physical detail; and family-stewarded material supplies what only the family record preserves. Where sources disagree, the archive sets out the disagreement on the affected page.

Primary documentation. The 1935 Nemzeti Szalon Hagyatéki kiállítás catalogue, the canonical period inventory of 118 works, reproduced in Számadó 2019 (pp. 41-42) and presented here as a navigable historical document at /exhibitions/1935-nemzeti-szalon-estate; the Hungarian, German, and Czech press of 1919 to 1936, including the Lyka Károly obituary (Magyar Művészet, 1930), cited per the /bibliography; and RGY monograms or “Rauscher” signatures on securely provenanced works.
The scholarship. Számadó Emese, Rauscher György, az új tárgyiasság és a gáláns világ festője, Komáromi Klapka György Múzeum katalógusai XXVIII, Komárom 2019 (ISBN 978-615-5588-11-2), the archive’s principal reference throughout (see /bibliography#szamado-2019 and /klapka-muzeum); together with the earlier scholarship of Gálig Zoltán (Limes 4/1996, pp. 7-26; Art Limes 5/2013) and Zsembery Dezső (Dorogi Füzetek 26, 2002). See /bibliography#galig-2013, /bibliography#galig-1996, and /bibliography#zsembery-2002.
Institutional collection records. KGYM (Komárom), MNG (Budapest), OSZMI and PIM (Budapest), DMM (Észak-Komárom / Komárno), the Slovak National Gallery (Bratislava), and the Kunstbibliothek of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Auction records. Houses where Rauscher works are recorded, among them Kieselbach, Virág Judit, Nagyházi, Pintér, and Roseberys, together with the wider set of houses and aggregators searched during research (listed per work on each sale-history note). These establish provenance and physical detail; realized prices are recorded internally but not published (see /rights-reproductions and the sale-history note on each work page).
Family-stewarded sources. Photographs, documents, and oral history preserved by the family: both the material contributed to the Klapka György Múzeum archive from 2010 onward and the material still held by the family. Oral-history facts carried only by this tier are attributed as family-stewarded knowledge rather than to an external citation.

The archive has worked to verify every claim against a primary source or established scholarship before inclusion. Sources were located using ordinary bibliographic research and, where useful, AI-assisted search; in every case the source itself was consulted directly and checked against the original before anything entered the archive.

Standard of proof for inclusion

A work enters the works catalogue when at least one of the following is satisfied:

(a) it is catalogued in Számadó 2019; (b) it appears in the 1935 Nemzeti Szalon Hagyatéki kiállítás catalogue under Rauscher’s name; (c) it carries period-press documentation under Rauscher’s name (a review, a reproduction, or an exhibition mention); (d) it is a securely provenanced work bearing the artist’s RGY monogram or a “Rauscher” signature.

Stylistic similarity alone is never sufficient. A work that meets a test but whose whereabouts are unknown is catalogued and marked as not located, and is gathered on the register at /works/not-located. A work claimed under Rauscher’s name in an auction listing or a secondary mention but failing every test is documented, with its source, on /works/rejected-attributions rather than added to the catalogue. Where such a claim originates in published scholarship, the archive gives its reasoning rather than a bare verdict.

On the size of the oeuvre

The documented oeuvre is the 118 works of the 1935 estate catalogue together with more than two dozen further documented works: the pre-1922 early works, the auction-traced and resurfaced canvases, and other pieces recorded in the family’s papers.

The widely cited figure of around 200 works is a separate measure. It comes from a contemporaries’ estimate of Rauscher’s total output, recorded by his family and noted by Gálig, who reports that contemporaries knew of some two hundred works. The two figures answer different questions: ~200 estimates how much Rauscher produced in his lifetime, while 118 plus the further documented works are what can be traced and cited today. Much of the estimated total remains untraced. See /faq and /name-disambiguation for related discussion.

Multi-axis status definitions

Each record carries four independent status axes, so that documentation, location, and attribution are never conflated. Each axis is defined here, and every work’s details list its values.

attribution_status: confirmed (securely by Rauscher) · attributed (claimed but not securely confirmed). A claim the archive does not accept is not a record under this axis; it is documented on the /works/rejected-attributions register instead.
documentation_basis: primary_with_image (a reliable image exists or is accessible) · 1935_catalogue (listed in 1935, no surviving image known to us) · 2019_catalogue (recorded in Számadó 2019, no surviving image known to us) · photo_only (known only from a period or installation photograph).
location_status: located (current location known, public or private) · not_located (existence documented, whereabouts unknown) · lost (documented, no trace post-1935, assumed lost).
period: early_pre_1922 · hungarian_1922_1928 · berlin_1928_1930 · unknown. (The object’s medium is carried separately as object_type.)

These axes are set independently. Example: a work can be attribution_status: confirmed, documentation_basis: photo_only, location_status: lost, period: berlin_1928_1930, meaning it is securely by Rauscher per Számadó, known to us only through a 1935 installation photograph, currently untraced, and made in Berlin between 1928 and 1930. Each axis answers one question and only that question.

Image policy

Reproductions of the artworks themselves are in the public domain (the artist died in 1930) and are credited to the institution that holds the work; where an institution has provided or published an image, the archive credits it and follows any reasonable conditions the institution requests. Third-party photographs (for example the 1935 installation photographs, and present-day photographs of works or sites) carry their own copyright and are credited to their source. The full policy, including the takedown procedure and the formal rights statement, is on /rights-reproductions.

Update process

The archive is a living document. Corrections, attribution disputes, ownership updates, and factual flags are accepted through the structured form at /corrections; each is logged in the public /changelog. Every record carries its own visible Last reviewed date.

Editorial roles

The archive is edited and stewarded by Daniel Rauscher, grand-nephew of the painter (see /about).

Limitations

The archive states plainly what it cannot yet directly verify:

some works are held in private collections without published records;
some attributions in older Hungarian press survive only as reproductions too poor to verify against a known work;
the whereabouts of works marked as not located may have changed since they were last recorded.

A further point of method: Rauscher Lajos (1845-1914), the Hungarian graphic artist, is not related to the painter and is not a grand-uncle, despite an occasional online claim; he and other bearers of the surname are kept out of the catalogue and addressed on /name-disambiguation.

Acknowledgements

The archive owes its foundation to the scholarship of Számadó Emese and the Klapka György Múzeum, Komárom, whose 2019 catalogue is its principal reference. It also draws on the records of the Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, the Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum and OSZMI, the Duna Menti Múzeum, the Slovak National Gallery, and the Kunstbibliothek of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, each credited where its material is used. Further acknowledgements are added here as the archive is consulted and expanded.