Bungard, he married Ana Sebastian, an Aromanian from Macedonia and also a Greek-Catholic. Later, he moved to Nagyludas in Szeben County, now Ludoș, Sibiu County, to work as a notary. He became involved with the cultural life of Romanian communities, and was noted for his participation in a choir which performed at Tălmaciu in February 1887. At Nagyludas, Mihail fathered four sons. One of them, Victor, obtained a Theology doctorate from the University of Vienna, teaching the subject and serving as a canon in Blaj. Another, Vasile, became an architect and was influenced by Romanian nationalism. Mihail's other son, Cornel Smigelschi, died in 1892, an event which inspired Octavian to paint a number of portraits from memory, and also to produce a series of drawings and canvasses of Abaddon. Cornel is depicted in the 1892 "Young Man Reading". Octavian Smigelschi began school in his native village, and in 1880 enrolled at the state Hungarian high school in Sibiu. There, he became close friends with Fritz Schullerus, and the two took art classes from Carl Dörschlag, a German immigrant. Following graduation in 1884, he obtained a public scholarship to study at the Drawing School and Art Teachers' College in Budapest, headed by Bertalan Székely, together with Schullerus. At this early stage of his career, he absorbed direct influences from Székely, Károly Ferenczy, and Pál Szinyei Merse. During summer 1886, while on vacation, he dedicated himself to drawing the rural landscapes of Szeben County, which produced a long series of drawings and watercolors, all showing echoes from the Barbizon school, and, possibly, Smigelschi's familiarity with the artistic guidelines set by John Ruskin. Smigelschi completed his studies in 1889. The following year, he applied for a scholarship in Romania, explaining that Hungary was stifling his creativity. He was finally integrated by the Hungarian education system, and named art teacher in the Upper Hungarian (Slovak) town of Banská Štiavnica. In 1890, Smigelschi held his first exhibition in Sibiu, alongside Schullerus and another Transylvanian Saxon colleague. In 1891 or 1892, he was hired to teach art at the state high school in Elisabetopol. His ambition at the time was to replicate in Romanian Transylvanian art what Mihály Munkácsy had done for Hungarian art, in introducing the peasant as a central character and using the events of his life to create a national iconography. Smigelschi held his teaching position until 1911, when he retired in order