Q131586718

Painted in 1877, this second canvas from that year joins the earlier 1877 entry in providing paired documentation of Hodler's early professional practice. At twenty-four he was a consistent and competent painter working steadily in Geneva, and the two 1877 canvases together suggest the range of subjects and formats he addressed in a single year. The late 1870s were the decade of preparation: Hodler was absorbing everything his training and observation offered, building toward compositional ambitions that would not fully crystallize for another decade. The Kunsthaus Zürich's comprehensive early-period holdings reflect its eventual understanding that these careful, serious, technically proficient early canvases were not mere juvenilia but essential chapters in the biography of one of European modernism's most important painters.

The second 1877 canvas shares the technical characteristics of its companion: academic oil painting method with careful tonal construction, firm outline, and controlled colour. The paint is applied with patient deliberateness rather than spontaneous gesture. Compared with the breakthrough works of a decade later, these canvases document a technical foundation that was entirely sound — what was to change was not craft but philosophical vision.