Q131586105

Another canvas from Hodler's final active year of 1917, this work represents the late landscape output that defined his last concentrated creative phase. After Valentine Godé-Darel's death, Hodler turned with renewed intensity to the alpine scenery that had sustained him throughout his career, finding in its permanence and seasonal transformation a language for continuing loss and continuing life. The late landscapes are sometimes described as more abstract than his middle-period works, and while the description needs qualifying — Hodler always remained a representational painter — there is truth in the observation that he stripped these final views to their most essential elements. The Kunsthaus Zürich holds multiple canvases from this late phase, testifying to Hodler's sustained energy right up to the months before his death in May 1918.

The 1917 canvases are among the most freely handled of Hodler's career. Paint is applied with a directness that minimizes the gap between perception and mark-making. Colour is often high-keyed and emotionally vivid. Yet the underlying structural logic — horizontal registers, simplified forms, carefully managed tonal contrast — remains the skeleton on which this expressive freedom is organised.