In his library at Budapest there now stands a small, well-executed bust of his wife in ivory; and on the walls hang several landscapes and still-life paintings, which he showed with a smile to an American visitor, who stood silent before them last winter, hoping for some inspiration of speech that would reconcile politeness with veracity and her own ideals of good art.

If a "deep love for art and an ardent desire to excel" will "more than compensate for the want of method," to quote Sir Joshua Reynolds, then Jokay would have been a great painter indeed.

While he never was that, his chisel and brushes have remained a recreation and delight to him always.
Apparently he was diverted from art to literature by a trifle; but in the light of later developments it is simple enough to see which was really the greater force working within.

The Academy of Arts and Sciences, founded by Szecheni, offered a prize for the best drama, and Jokay won it.

He was then seventeen, for careers began early in olden times.