Q131586092

Completed in 1888, this canvas comes from Hodler's immediate pre-Symbolist years, when he was producing Night — the monumental canvas that would shock and then electrify the Paris Salon of 1891. While Night itself dominated his attention around this time, he continued painting smaller works in a realist-inflected idiom, building the technical resources he would deploy in the breakthrough composition. The late 1880s were years of intensive study of symbolic subject matter, including the sleeping figure, the draped form, and the relationship between the human body and abstract space. Canvases from 1888 often reflect this focused preparation: more emotionally charged than his early career works, but not yet organized according to the full Parallelism doctrine.

The 1888 canvases show Hodler's technique in a state of creative tension. Academic foundations are still present in the paint construction, but drawing decisions — particularly the increasingly dominant outlines — point toward the symbolic linearism ahead. Colour choices at this moment are more experimental than in earlier work, testing the expressive range available.