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the two great Geneva Alpine landscape artists, Alexandre of Savoy: the Peak of Claume) from 1901, the peak is bathed
Calame and François Diday. The latter, who died in 1877, was in the pale pink of the early evening alpenglow giving it an
at the peak of his fame when Hodler arrived in Geneva. ethereal quality that anyone who has seen the Alps at sunset
will recognize.
Hodler himself never stopped painting the Alps. In the last
two years of his life, from his apartment on the Mont-Blanc Finally, the Martin Bodmer Foundation in Cologny, drawing
embankment, he painted Lake Geneva, the Salève and Mount on the voluminous Jura Br�schweiler Archives, presents
Blanc over and over again, eventually eliminating the urban everything you ever wanted to know about Ferdinand Hodler
development on the far side of the lake in his representations (and much, much more). The Archives contain some 80,000
and focusing on the lake and the mountains. Of the last two, items, and the selection on display includes photos, press
Le Lac Léman et le Mont Blanc, l’après-midi (Lake Geneva and clippings and letters, among many others.
Mount Blanc, Afternoon) was done in February 1918. The
second, with the same title, was unfinished when he died in The exhibit, running until 25 August 2019, is organized
May. around themes (the usual presentation for the Foundation’s
exhibits), including Hodler’s tumultuous love life that
Hodler, all his life, was also fascinated by the human form. included mistresses, wives, and children who, at the time,
One of his closest friends was the poet Louis Duchosal, who were on both sides of legality. There are even short film clips
died in Geneva in 1901. He was described as “puny”, but showing him at the Geneva World’s Fair of 1896, giving us a
Hodler had put his face on the warrior on the far right in La glimpse of him in motion, but without voice.
retraite de Marignan, giving him the physique of an American
football player. Upon being informed of Duchosal’s death, he It is a point of interest that on the day before his death, Hodler
sped to the man’s house and painted him, lying peacefully went to Cologny, and Martin Bodmer was one of his admirers,
and looking very much asleep. owing a preliminary sketch for La retraite de Marignan.

He also painted his beloved mistress, Albertine Dupin dying. Both the quantity and the immense variety of the pieces
Along one entire wall are twelve portraits from the beginning on display – not to mention the superb layout, typical of
to the last years of his career, plus four more self-portraits. the Foundation’s exhibits – bring alive the man behind the
paintings and sketches in the Musée d’art et d’histoire, the
In a collateral room of the main galleries is an exhibit of man who inspired the contemporaries whose work is on
Hodler’s notebooks. He was never without one to sketch display at the Maison Tavel.
in and filled dozens of them. These have been beautifully
reproduced by the Museum in a small book, Les carnets de
Ferdinand Hodler, on sale there.

Also, in the labyrinth of the painting galleries, is an exhibit,
Hodle(r)estauré (Hodlerestored) built around the extensive
work of restoration of three of his paintings. For anybody who
has never encountered what is involved in such an operation,
it can be fascinating, for the delicateness of a canvas and the
paint that has been applied to it requires tender loving care,
almost superhuman patience and time – that can stretch
out into years, depending upon what is discovered in the
process.

Elsewhere in the galleries, in another collateral room, is a
delightful small painting of a woman adjusting her garter, a
Hodler, hung far away from the others, opposite a Renoir and
a van Gogh. There are also three large splendid canvases by
Alexandre Perrier, a contemporary of Hodler’s whose work,
exhibited with Hodler’s at the Paris Exposition universelle in
1900 and at the Vienna Secession, Hodler admired.

Perrier’s work is also on exhibit at the Maison Tavel within an
exhibit entitled L’esprit de Hodler dans la peinture genevoise
(Hodler’s Spirit in Geneva Painting). Among the thirty-plus
paintings are Alpine landscapes, portraits and sundry others.
They vary from simply nice to extraordinary. In Didier
Estoppey’s Paysage de Savoie (le pic de Chalume) (Landscape

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