A Hungarian Citizen - György Ráth and his Life's Work describes how Ráth (1828-1905), a judge by profession, became a great collector and promoter of contemporary art.
Ráth collected etchings, paintings, books and all kinds of antiques. Such was his fervor that he eventually bought a villa in a tree-lined avenue parallel with Budapest's Andrássy Street to house his collection. The villa was purchased with the proceeds from the sale of one of his Rembrandts.
Ráth bequeathed the more than 1,000 artworks in his collection to the Museum of Applied Arts, of which he was the first director.
Ráth's villa, in Városligeti fasor, still stands today, in spite of being bombed in WWII. After being renovated, it became the home to an exhibition of art donated to Hungary by the government of China to the Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Arts. Today it still functions as an exhibition space for the museum. In the 1990s, the villa's dining room was renovated and opened to the public as the György Ráth Memorial Room.
