His Early Life

Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) was one of the famous Swiss Symbolist painters of the nineteenth century. He was born in Bern in 1853 in a poor family. He was the youngest of his parents’ six children. His father was a cabinet maker. He lost his father and two brothers to tuberculosis when he was eight years old. When his father died of tuberculosis, Hodler’s mother remarried a painter and decorator. He already had five children from his first marriage. Within a few months from there on, many of the other members of his family, including his siblings, died of diseases. At the age of nine, young Hodler was put to work at his stepfather’s workshop to help him make commercial signs. Hodler’s mother died when he was thirteen. After his mother’s death, Ferdinand was sent to a nearby town to work as apprentice with a local landscape painter. These highly demoralising incidents infused in him a sense of mortality in Hodler’s mind.

First Apprenticeship With Stepfather

Hodler specialises in portraits, landscapes and genre paintings in his own realistic style. He is also famous as a Swiss Symbolist painter who focused on the symmetric unity of nature and the mystery of human life. Hodler did not receive any academic training. He became an apprentice with his stepfather initially, who also was a local decorative painter. Thereafter, Hodler was sent to Thun to work with another local artist. He started gaining speciality in landscape painting with Alpine views as the subject of his painting. He sold these paintings to tourists to earn a livelihood. He was travelling as far afield as Madrid and Paris before the turn of the century.

Training Under Barthelemy Menn, Defining Years

At the age of 18, Hodler walked all the way to Geneva where he would spend a major part of his adult life. He studied a the Geneva Art School under Barthelemy Menn. Menn was a successful artist who had studied with famous Swiss history painters such as Jean-Leonard Lugardon and Jan-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. These years became highly fruitful for Hodler as he expressed his gratitude to Mann, saying that ‘It is to him that I owe everything‘. He was influenced by the realism of Gustave Courbet and Camille Corot in the initial stages. Later on, he developed his own unique style. Hodler developed his own innovative painting style called Symbolism, which he also called Parallelism. He is also seen as a harbiinger of Expressionism. Hodler was in relative obscurity until the age of 50, when he finally received an award for his most famous painting ‘The Night’.

Portraitist Who Documented the Cruelty of Death

Hurdler was married twice. But in 1908, he met Valentine Gode-Darel and later she became his mistress. Suddenly, Valentine was diagnosed for cancer. Portrait art was considered necessary in the past to earn a living and hence, it became his chosen genre, giving him the chance experiment with expression and colour. From 1900, he was in great demand as a portrait painter. His most powerful works from this period are his paintings and sketches of his mistress Valentine Gode-Darel, who was suffering from cancer and lay dying in her bed. Hodler was always at her bedside, docementing the cruelty of death as it ravaged her body in the last few days of her life through a number of portraits himself and those of his dying mistress.

Hodler’s first major painting was in the form of ‘The Student’ (1874) which showed him as a maturing artist. He was greatly impressed by the paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger. In 1875, he went to Basel, where he studied Holbein’s painting ‘The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb’. Hodler was away from the limelight until the age of 50 when he received an award for his most famous painting ‘The Night’ in 1891. He went on to receive several other honours both at home and internationally, mostly in German-speaking countries.

‘The Night’, His First Major Painting

Hodler’s first major painting ‘The Night’ bore resemblance to the state of his traumatised mind. He painted this painting in1889. In the painting, Hodler portrays himself as the character that is woken up suddenly by an unknown figure of death. He is surrounded by a group of men and women entwined in sleep. The work is symbolic and universal, evoking the essence of death and night. It displays a heightened Realism, reflective of Courbet’s ‘The Studip’. Hodler later called the style of painting that he used in this painting ‘Parallelism’. He created the term ‘Parallelism’ to explain the idea of creating similar forms repeatedly in the painting. According to Hodler, ‘the meaning of the term ‘Parallelism’ had a philosophical sense as nature has an order, a repetition and that all men, in the end, are the same. When his painting ‘the Night’ was first exhibited in Geneva in 1891, the nudity shown in the painting caused a furore, causing it to be rejected by the Beaux-Arts exhibition. However, it was accepted into the Parisian Beaux-Arts and was singled out by Auguste Rodin. Still, success to him was not instant as Hodler had to wait until 1900, when the painting secured him gold medal at the Universal Exhibition.

Long Wait for Acceptance After Initial Rejection

Hodler’s paintings were influenced largely by those of Gustave Courbet and his own spiritual crisis. He always wished to flee from the modern industrial society and seek refuge in rustic peaceful atmosphere. Hodlers painting style evolved from 1890. Hodler’s style of painting had mystical dreamlike quality. His painting ‘Night’ was exhibited in the Salon 1890, emphacising his new style and symbolising, age, solitude and contemplation. He also painted a number of large scale historical paintings, often with a patriotic swiss themes. In 1897, he was commissioned to paint frescoes for the wapon’s room at the Swiss National Museums in Zurick. However, his ideas proved controversial. It took almost three years for him to evolve his own frescoes again. In 1900, he received his first recognition when was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Worls Fair for three of his paintings, ‘Night’, ‘Rhythemic’ and ‘Day’.

His Painting ‘The Woodcutter’ on Franc Currency Note

Hodler is also remembered as a history painter and decorator. In 1896, he was commissioned to paint the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Geneva for the Swiss National Exhibition, and to paint a historical event – The Retreat From Marignan’ for the Swiss National Museum. His success after these commissions proved his skill and earned him further commissions, including ‘Unanimity’, ‘A Glimpse into Infinity’ and ‘Blossoming‘. His another most famous painting ‘the Woodcutter’ appeared on the Swiss 50 Franc note.

Landscape Painting Towards the End of His Life

Towards the end of his life, Hodler returned to landscape painting. His favourite subjects were Swiss mountains, lake glaciers, trees and rocks. He believed that landscape painting should show nature made greater and simpler, pared of all insignificant details. He was a active sketches and on his death, he left more than 9000 drawings and 12000 sketchbook drawings. He was a firm believer in preparatory sketches. In the last few years of his life, he used what was called ‘Durer’s glass’, a plate of glass on which he traced the outline of the model, and then transferred to paper and particularly impressed his contemporaries. He died in Geneva in 1918.

Hodler’s Well-known Paintings

Some of Hodler’swell-known paintings include ‘The Night’, ‘The Dream of the Shepherd’, ‘The Woodcutter’, ‘Autumn Evening’, ‘The Tired of Life’, ‘Portrait of Helene Weigle’, ‘The Sacred Hour (Die Heilige Stunde), ‘Spring’, etc.