The life and work of Ferdinand Hodler (1853- 1918)

Autor(en): [s.n.]

Objekttyp: Article

Zeitschrift: The Swiss observer : the journal of the Federation of Swiss Societies in the UK

Band (Jahr): - (1973)

Heft 1660

PDF erstellt am: 27.09.2021

Persistenter Link: http://doi.org/10.5169/seals-689004

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Founded in 1919 by Paul F. Boehringer The Official Organ of the Swiss Colony in Great Britain Vol.59 No. 1660 : FRIDAY, 11th MAY, 1973 THE LIFE AND WORKOF ^ FEFÖNAND HODLER (1853-1918)

Hodler a few more. For both, one reason may have been the fact that they were their own cheapest model. What seems more important however, is the painter's constant urge to confront himself, to examine himself afresh, even to surprise himself, in order to discover what lies beneath the surface. For Hodler, especially in his youth, portrayed himself in the most varied dress and moods — laughing, grinning, angry, at work, solemn, self-assured and self- "Der Holzfäller" proud, satisfied, and at the end filled with fore- Rem Arts Mwsewm boding of death. Hodler also has something in com- mon with Munch, who was ten years younger. The link here lies less in certain personality traits than in the bitter experiences of both painters in their youth. Munch's early work is marked by the experience of death. He lost his mother when he was five, his sister in 1877, his father in 1889. The Damocles sword of illness hovered over Munch as a Ferdinand Hodler was born in the meetings in Langenthal of a religious sect constant threat. same year as the Dutch painter van Gogh. ("Stundeler"). These encounters are He was ten years older than the Norwegian reflected in paintings such as "Prayer Edvard Munch. All three painters were meeting in the Canton of Bern" THE SPIRIT OF DEATH uncompromising individualists. They may (Kunstmuseum Bern) and "At prayer". Hodler lost both parents and all five have been influential during their lifetime He also painted an increasing number of sisters and brothers from tuberculosis but none of them founded a school or portraits of old men and women — con- between 1859 and 1885. He and joined his contemporaries in any form of templative old men, artisans and vintagers. Albertine, the daughter of his sister Marie movement like the previous generation of In the early 1890s Hodler went to Paris Elise, were the only survivors in the Impressionists or the later Nabis ana where he came under the influence of the family. His own son, Hector, was to die Fauves. Although all three had very Rosicrucians who invited him to exhibit of the same disease in 1920. So Hodler's different personalities and their works are in the Salon de la Rose-Croix. Hodler youth was overshadowed by death to an unmistakably their own, we can establish accepted, showed "The disappointed unusual degree and as a result he always certain affinities, partly because they were souls" in 1892 and became a member of felt threatened. This influenced his contemporaries but more through the Rosicrucian artist's group, the Rose- painting. It emerges very clearly in his common experiences and characteristics. Croix Esthétique. large figurative compositions of the Like van Gogh, Hodler was strongly In their early works, both Hodler 1890s and is most striking in "Night", attracted to religion. Van Gogh started and van Gogh use a similar palette. dated 1890. "Night" shows a sleeping work with an art dealer, then threw him- Brown in all its gradations dominates, and group and a powerful man — the thirty- self into Bible studies and worked as a most of the figurative work is marked by seven year-old painter himself — shocked missionary in the Borinage until he was a heavy earthy tone. Paris, and especially from sleep by a nightmare or the spirit of dismissed for taking the Gospels too the Mediterranean, opened van Gogh's death. literally. At the age of twenty-seven he eyes to the effect of pure colour. Hodler's Hodler and Munch can also be com- became aware of his vocation as a painter. palette did not lighten until the 1890s pared in that the works of both can be He saw his art as the continuation of his and only achieved its full luminosity after clearly divided into two parts: the early previous activities. the turn of the century. work, with some of the characteristics When he was about twenty-seven, Another similarity between Hodler already mentioned, contrasts with the Hodler went through a religious crisis. and van Gogh is the important place self- later work marked by stronger colours and He too wished to become a pastor. In portraits take up in their work. Van Gogh greater luminosity. The victory over the the summer of 1880 he attended the painted at least thirty self-portraits, fear of death enabled both painters to Hodler was receiving commissions Published Twice Monthly at for portraits as early as 1890. Naturally CDcSioiss Observer 63/67 TABERNACLE STREET the most direct portraits are those he LONDON E.C.2 his initiative. Between Tel: 01-253 2321 painted on own 1911 and 1913 Hodler painted at least HON. PRESIDENT: Robert J. Keller Telegrams: Paperwyse London HON. VICE-PRESIDENT: four portraits of his friend the writer Gottfried Keller PREPAID SUBSCRIPTION RATES Mathias Morhardt who also encouraged (POST FREE) EDITOR: Pierre-Michel Béguin Puvis de Chavannes, Rodin and others. UNITED KINGDOM £2.40 Between 1912 and 1915 Hodler painted 24 issues Madame Ac/râo/y Counc/7: 12 issues £1.25 a number of portraits of F. Burri (Chairman) 6 issues £0.65 Valentine Darel, whose suffering and death Dr. C. Jagmetti (Vice-Chairman) SWITZERLAND and elsewhere he recorded stage by stage, almost as in a O. F. (Hon. Sec.) Boehringer, J.P., 12 issues F rs. 13—or £1.30 his visits to the J. R. M. Suess, diary, during frequent Eusebio, A. Kunz, 24 issues Frs. 25—or £2.50 B. Simon, B. Feller, Mrs. M. Meier Lausanne clinic. The depth of this Swiss subscriptions may be paid into experience led to less stylized com- Editor's telephone: 01-602 1378 Postcheck Konto Basle 40—5718 positions and an increasing freedom and directness of execution which also in- fluenced his landscape painting of the turn their attention to more active life. popular figures of all kinds. Hodler por- same period. In Munch's work this is represented by trayed one world, which we can describe his workmen and teams of horses, in that as the emotive, feminine one in the large REGAL TRINITY OF THE EIGER, of Hodler by such works as "The wood- figurative compositions he invented him- MONCH AND JUNGFRAU cutter" or "The rising of the students of self and developed until the end of his After the turn of the century land- Jena". But this more masculine spirit also life. The other world is that of the active, scapes became of major importance found pictorial expression in their por- masculine, forceful historical paintings. beside his large-scale compositions. traits and landscapes. Hodler did not paint these national sub- Hodler's extensive preoccupation with jects and scenes of war on his initiative. murals and their technique had brought HODLER'S ALLEGORICAL STYLE They were entries for competitions or about a fundamental change in his style. direct commissions. He forces the even further into Before the First World War Hodler's spectator Hodler's interpretation of national the distance this view from afar no figurative work was most admired. These now; history derived from the sense of tradition longer requires clearly delineated forms paintings obviously suited the general and the cult of a heroic past newly or clearly demarcated and separated mood of euphoria that was blind to the fostered by the historicism of the nine- colour areas. catastrophe to come. After the familiar teenth century. Yet it must be remem- In his landscapes Hodler tried in world of yesterday had collapsed, Hodler's bered that the first great competition another to the same themes allegories necessarily lost credit too. But way express works referred in fact to military defeats as in his large figurative historical and the true for their short life was reason of the old Swiss Confederation: the allegorical works: unity and uniformity. above all the fact that cannot allegories "Engagement at Fraubrunnen" and "The But whereas his chief difficulty in the be created of by an individual, out nothing Engagement at Neuenegg" (1798) were figurative works was the composition, and who stood the moreover one on intended for the Town Hall at Bern and this problem disappeared in landscape borders of The is society. precondition the retreat from Marignano (1515) for painting. It was restricted to the choice seeks always a community that new the Swiss Landesmuseum in Zurich. of motifs. So this choice was of major There such allegories for itself. was no The style which Hodler developed importance. Wherever he looked Hodler Geneva community either in or in any for his mural paintings was to affect his repeatedly discovered natural forms that Switzerland. other part of And yet other work and in particular to modify complied with his desire for symmetry, "Night" of 1890, is one of the great his attitude to landscape. Hodler painted repetition, uniformity and with his pictorial creations of the nineteenth large numbers of alpine scenes after the structural principle of parallelism. century. "Night" is also the first reali- turn of the century and it is as though his In 1908 Hodler painted the first of Hodler's zation of concept of parallelism: murals enabled him to see alpine landscape his large alpine landscapes. The scene is the to the overall attempt intensify effect, in monumental terms as well, and to no longer viewed from the valley as above all to the sense of by convey unity, express it monumentally. before, but from halfway up the moun- the of motif. In he repetion "Night" tainside, so that the foreground — as in achieves this through the variation of the FIRST AND FOREMOST, "Moonlit night" — plays a secondary role and the dis- sleeping figures chequered A FIGURATIVE PAINTER beside the regal trinity of the Eiger, tribution of light and shade. It is characteristic of Hodler that Monch and Jungfrau. Only a few years If "Night" is the final expression of the first works he created as an artist later, during a lengthy stay in Murren in Hodler's suffering in his youth and his rather than as a painter of souvenirs 1911, Hodler painted the mountain peaks youth and his early as a painter, years were not landscapes but portraits, self- without foreground: the heavy form of "Day", apart from its more general portraits and figure paintings. The early the Breithorn and the majestic Monch. allegorical meaning, marks the moment portraits and self-portraits also reveal that This intimate encounter with the moun- when Hodler managed to assert himself Hodler was first arid foremost a figurative tains reached its culmination in 1911. as an artist. The dawning day, conveyed painter. They have an admirably severe The blue-brown colour that was charac- in gesture by women kneeling on a structure and a of expression teristic of Hodler's later work was first flower-strewn mountain meadow above a clarity unusual in a beginner. used in his paintings of the alpine peaks. sea of mist, is also a new day for Hodler, Between 1886 and 1889 Hodler finally promising him freedom as a creative artist after decades of bitter completed some thirty paintings, most THE SUPREME PAINTER OF fairly small, of his mistress Augustine ALPINE LANDSCAPES proverty and often hostile rejection. Dupin and their son Hector. They range In 1912 Hodler stayed in Chesieres from simple genre paintings to intimate in the Waadtland and painted the first CULT OF A HEROIC PAST portraits of mother and child and more large landscapes of Wallis; the incom- Even Hodler's early work shows the monumental conceptions. parable view into the lower valley of the curious split between two divergent if not Until the turn of the century Hodler Rhone, the view of the Dent du Midi and opposed styles of expression that seem repeatedly painted girls picking or holding the Grand Muveran. The forms now seem almost irreconcilable: on the one hand flowers. Often the likeness is shrouded less clear-cut than before, the colour is the stress on feeling, comtemplative under a more generalized attitude whose applied more softly and the effect is more figures, meditating men, girls with symbolic character anticipates the great painterly. flowers; on the other, warriors and later compositions. Already suffering from his final

2 illness, Hodler spent August and Septem- the forms are simplified, specific details GuarV/a«, the Foreign Minister was dis- ber, 1917 in Caux near Montreux. The have been eliminated and he uses only cussing the Middle East in Geneva with landscapes he painted there - "Mist the simplest colour tones to achieve the United Nations Secretary-General, rising over the mouth of the Rhone", directness of effect. Dr. Waldheim." "Grammont in the morning sun" and the The landscapes are the most But Mr. Graber's statement after "Waadtland Alps from Rochers-de- important part of Hodler's extensive his meeting with Dr. Zayyat showed that Naye" — have been described as "plane- work. If Cezanne and van Gogh have no compromise over neutrality was in the tary landscapes" (paysages planétaires). given us a particular image of the land- offing. "I felt the need to explain to Dr. They are supreme exemples of Hodler's scape of southern Europe which borders Zayyat the unvarying guidelines of our massive mountains and cosmic spaces, on the Mediterranean and Edvard Munch neutral policy, its imperatives and its painted in bold colours in an intense, of the coastal landscape of the north, limits. But, he added, everytime that new transparent light. Hodler has contributed the definitive developments will give our overtures and In his last works Hodler returns to image of the Alps. No other painting of will for cooperation an opportunity to the early paintings of lakes though now Alpine scenery is comparable. come into play, this will be done Egypt has her own views on the Middle East problem which we understand as positive attitude towards international the Egyptians understand our own con- problems. The paper "Al Ahram" victions". claimed that by this apparent shift in Mr. Graber had spoken in this way diplomatic stance, the Swiss Government several times before. He had said the same was attempting to condition the Swiss thing when he came to London in to the inevitability of Swiss last as the IS SWISS FOREIGN POLICY public entry February of year. Although, the United Nations. CHANGING? into Guarcfr'a« states, Switzerland is flexing its The GW/V/V« 'i Berne corre- muscles in the diplomatic sphere, never Mr. Pierre Graber has returned spondant commented that although the has neutrality been more foricbly vindi- from a journey to Egypt combining an Egyptian newspaper was probably duty cated than today. Every official speech official visit to that country and a special bound to arrive at such a conclusion, "the will stress the importance of cooperation meeting — a kind of diplomatic première Swiss can hardly dispute the accuracy of and involvement in the world, provided with the Swiss ambassadors to 13 the analysis. It comes at a time when the the "imperatives" of neutrality can be countries of the Middle East and North Swiss Government is flexing its met. Africa. supposedly neutral muscles in almost un- A need for change has gradually Our Foreign Minister was un- precedented fashion". emerged and been recognized as the expectedly received by President Anouar To back his claim, the Guard/a« s nations of the world grew closer together. Sadate before having talks with his Rod Chapman said that Mr. Graber's Switzerland could not remain indifferent Egyptian counterpart, Dr. Mohammed al Egyptian visit was "by way of a diplo- to the new relationships resulting from Zayyat. The Egyptian Press interpreted matic overture to the idea that Switzerland the United Nations, the EEC, the GATT this visit, and the Swiss presence at the would not be averse to playing the role and various international movements. preparatory talks for a European Security of mediator in the Middle East crisis". Ever since Mr. Fritz Wahlen, former conference, as pointing to Berne's more "Just a month ago, writes the Foreign Minister, suggested the idea of

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