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.

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