Ferdinand Hodler, this painter is a Swiss national treasure

Welcome to HeARTful Blog. I really wanted this blog to be about a national Swiss treasure: Ferdinand Hodler (1853 - 1918). He was revered as a master of stunning mountain landscapes of Switzerland throughout his art career. He traveled throughout the country and studied them intensely, even their geology.

 

In Geneva, the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire has the largest collection of his work in the world. There is an entire gallery devoted to his landscapes, and if you visit, you will be astonished at their massive proportions. The painting shown above, “Lake Thun with Symmetrical Reflections” was painted in 1905. The lake, which you pass by on the train on the way to Interlaken, is a breathtaking turquoise blue with tall mountains rising up around it. He painted many versions of this scene, as well as that of Lake Geneva.

 

Born in Berne, of humble beginnings, his first art influence was his stepfather, a decorative painter. After the death of his mother in 1867, he traveled to Thun to study with Ferdinand Sommer, who taught him painting techniques to render Alpine scenes . By the age of 17, having lost most of his family members to tuberculosis, he felt ready to travel to Geneva to study with Barthélemy Menn. Hodler wrote: “Menn! I owe everything to him!”. Menn taught at the Geneva Drawing Academy for 42 years.

 

He also painted several self-portraits. The painting above is from 1891 when he was 38 years old. It is also at the museum.

Before he was widely well-known in Switzerland, he went through a figurative phase in allegory painting. He was considered a “symbolist,” painting several murals and panels in public places.

He was also commissioned to illustrate two official Swiss bank notes in 1911, ”The Reaper” and “The Woodcutter,” validating the benefits of good honest work in the countryside.

Overlighting this work was “Parallelism”, a term he coined to represent the connection of humans to nature, by depicting scenes and figures with repetition and symmetry. This can clearly be seen later in his landscapes, including the Thun canvas shown above. He believed it was the job of the artist to show this kind of harmony to the world.

Hodler was a man of convictions, not just for his art, but against destruction caused by war. During WWI, he was outspoken about the bombing of the Reims Cathedral in France by the Germans. The whole roof was destroyed. As a result, Germany stopped exhibiting his paintings, and he lost some valuable clientele. This may be part of the reason his work was not recognized in that time period in America, as much as the French impressionists’. But there have been retrospectives - In New York City, as well as in Paris at the Musée d’Orsay in recent years.

Musée d’Art et d’Histoire - MAH
Rue Charles-Galland 2
1206 Genève
022 418 26 00
mah@geneve.ch

Open Tuesday through Sunday from 10h-18h, Thursdays till 21h.
Free entry to the temporary exhibitions on the first Sunday of each month.