The Swiss artist Ferdinand Hodler was obsessed in a positive sense. As a painter, he was always on the lookout for an order of nature beyond the visible. This quest to get to the bottom of the truth is why Hodler at the beginning of the twentieth century passed on to the serial portrayal of certain motives. As before Paul Cézanne always presented new variants of his bathers and had several times the Montagne Sainte-Victoire on the subject, so also devoted himself to Hodler again and again certain topics. This also includes Lake Geneva, which the artist represented six times in total from the Swiss municipality of Chexbres.

The 1905 painting "Lake Geneva, seen from Chexbres" is in this sense a significant picture. In another respect, however, the painting painted with oil on canvas stands out from the artist's complete oeuvre. Hodler argued that being is permeated with symmetries and repetitions. This view went hand in hand with the formal possibilities of symbolism on the one hand and Art Nouveau on the other. So Hodler could use the Art Nouveau style elements such as the decorative lines and floral ornamentation to express his idea of ??order in the world.

The situation is different with "Lake Geneva, seen from Chexbres". The picture is less strict in composition and style of painting than many a picture of Hodler. Compared to the painting "Lake Thun with symmetrical reflection", for example, Hodler did not force the image content into a strict order of images. The view of Lake Geneva is an excerpt from reality, the meadow in the foreground of the picture and the promontory in the middle seem to have been copied from reality. At best, with the representation of the clouds, the artist ties in with the strict pictorial aesthetic of other landscapes. With the motif Hodler reaches a similar level of abstraction as in the "Thunersee" picture. Striking is also the uniform ranking of the clouds. Above all, the symmetry typical of Hodler can be found in its reflection in the water.

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Lake Geneva, Seen from Chexbres by Ferdinand Hodler. Available as an art print on canvas, photo paper, watercolor board, uncoated paper or Japanese paper.
painting · symbolism · landscape · lake of geneva · cloud · clouds · symbolist · switzerland · swiss · cloudscape · water · lake · Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland / Bridgeman Images