1853-1918 Swiss Ferdinand Hodler Galleries Hodler was born in Berne and grew up in poverty. His father, Jean Hodler, made a meager living as a carpenter; his mother, Marguerite (n??e Neukomm), was from a peasant family. By the time Hodler was eight years old, he had lost his father and two younger brothers to tuberculosis. His mother remarried to a decorative painter, but in 1867 she too died of tuberculosis. Before he was ten, Hodler received training in decorative painting from his stepfather, and was subsequently sent to Thun to apprentice with a local painter, Ferdinand Sommer. Hodler's earliest works were conventional landscapes, which he sold in shops and to tourists. In 1871, at the age of 18, he traveled on foot to Geneva to start a career as a painter. The works of Hodler's early maturity consisted of landscapes, figure compositions and portraits, treated with a vigorous realism. He made a trip to Basel in 1875, where he studied the paintings of Hans Holbein??especially Dead Christ in the Tomb, which influenced Hodler's many treatments of the theme of death. In the last decade of the 19th century his work evolved to combine influences from several genres including symbolism and art nouveau. He developed a style which he called Parallelism, characterized by groupings of figures symmetrically arranged in poses suggesting ritual or dance. In 1884 Hodler met Augustine Dupin (1852?C1909), who became his companion and model for the next several years. Their son, Hector Hodler, was born in 1887. In 1889 Hodler married Bertha Stucki; they were divorced in 1891. Hodler's work in his final phase took on an expressionist aspect with strongly coloured and geometrical figures. Landscapes were pared down to essentials, sometimes consisting of a jagged wedge of land between water and sky. However, the most famous of Hodler's paintings portray scenes in which characters are engaged in everyday activities, such as the famous woodcutter (Der Holzfaller, Mus??e d'Orsay, Paris). This picture went on to appear on the back of the 50 Swiss Franc bank note issued by the Swiss National Bank. In 1898, Hodler married Berthe Jacques. In 1914 he condemned the German atrocities conducted using artillery at Rheims. In retaliation for this, German art museums excluded Hodler's work. In 1908 he met Valentine Gode-Darel, who became his mistress. She was diagnosed with cancer in 1913, and the many hours Hodler spent by her bedside resulted in a remarkable series of paintings documenting her disintegration. Her death in January 1915 affected Hodler greatly. He occupied himself with work; a series of about 20 introspective self-portraits date from 1916. By late 1917 his declining health led him to thoughts of suicide. He died on May 19, 1918 in Geneva leaving behind a number of unfinished works portraying the city.  Related Paintings of Ferdinand Hodler :. | Der Genfersee von St Prex aus | Genfersee mit Mont Blanc im Morgenrot | Gurzelen | Genfersee mit sechs Schwanen | Portrait of Louise-Delphine Duchosal |
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Victor Borisov-Musatov
(Russian), (April 14 [O.S. April 2] 1870 - November 8 [O.S. October 26] 1905) was a Russian painter, prominent for his unique Post-Impressionistic style that mixed Symbolism, pure decorative style and realism. Together with Mikhail Vrubel he is often referred as the creator of Russian Symbolism style. Victor Musatov was born in Saratov, Russia (he added the last name Borisov later). His father was a minor railway official who had been born as a serf. In his childhood he suffered a spinal injury, which made him humpbacked for the rest of his life. In 1884 he entered Saratov real school, where his talents as an artist were discovered by his teachers Fedor Vasiliev and Konovalov. He was enrolled in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1890, transferring the next year to the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint-Petersburg, where he was a pupil of Pavel Chistyakov. The damp climate of Saint-Petersburg was not good for Victor's health and in 1893 he was forced to return to Moscow and re-enroll to the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture. His earlier works like May flowers, 1894 were labelled decadent by the school administration, who sharply criticised him for making no distinction between the girls and the apple trees in his quest for a decorative effect. The same works however were praised by his peers, who considered him to be the leader of the new art movement. The Pool. 1902In 1895 Victor once again left Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture and enrolled in Fernand Cormon's school in Paris. He studied there for three years, returning in summer months to Saratov. He was fascinated by the art of his French contemporaries, and especially by the paintings of "the father of French Symbolism" Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and by the work of Berthe Morisot. In 1898 Borisov-Musatov returned to Russia and almost immediately fell into what it is called "fin de siecle nostalgia". He complained about "the cruel, the truly iron age", "dirt and boredom", "devil's bog", and he had acute money problems that were somewhat alleviated only in the last years of his life when collectors started to buy his paintings. Musatov's response was creating a half-illusory world of the 19th century nobility, their parks and country-seats. This world was partially based on the estate of princes Prozorvky-Galitzines Zubrilovka and partially just on Musatov's imagination. Borisov-Musatov also abandoned oil-paintings for the mixed tempera and watercolor and pastel techniques that he found more suitable for the subtle visual effects he was trying to create.
Giorgio Schiavone
born circa 1433-1504
J.-B. Charpentier