![]() The paintings span 50 years and cover a good deal of territory in French- and German-speaking Switzerland. There is an unusual predilection for pinks and whites. Hodler scratched marks into the surface and he built sweeping areas of color into hills that sit on fields like elephants on a stool. They are skillful, and they have an impressive technical range. Taken together, the 26 landscapes in the show have a degree of freshness that the figure paintings do not have. The wholeness of nature remained Hodler's ideal. Hodler's landscapes tend to be untouched, intact, with barely a trace of the industrial age. In the mid- to late 19th century, the Swiss landscape was overrun by tourists for the first time, and Switzerland began to experience the full effects of industrial development. Nature is both Switzerland's great resource and a source of the tourism that has left many parts of the country overdeveloped and endangered. Eisenman calls attention to the meaning of nature in Switzerland. In his 1914 self-portrait, the bearded artist paints himself as a blend of self-confidence, self-importance and self-protectedness that can be felt throughout his work. ''Inspiration,'' from around 1910, with its four somnambulatory women in red dresses, striding across a sand-colored field bursting with red flowers, each body dazed and overcome by the infinity of nature, is an example of Hodler's heavy-handed Symbolism. Two representative figurative works have been included in the show. He saw himself primarily as a figure painter, and made his reputation through large, figurative compositions that were involved with the kind of cosmic themes that preoccupied many late-19th-century European artists. ![]() For Hodler, landscape occupied a key but somewhat secondary role. ![]() The most popular paintings by Hodler have been his landscapes, which are currently the subject of a fine exhibition at the National Academy of Design. Broken down into its parts, however, it is complex and revealing. His work is not greater than the sum of its parts. Compared with Corot, Courbet, Gauguin and Munch, Hodler's partly Realist, partly Post-Impressionist, partly Symbolist, partly Expressionist paintings seem unresolved. FERDINAND HODLER may have been the most influential Swiss artist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but his work does not travel well. ![]()
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