The Gotthard Post (1873)

This 1873 version of The Gotthard Post predates by one year the 1874 variant now in the Credit Suisse collection, and comparison of the two canvases reveals Koller's working method of refining a successful composition through iteration. The St Gotthard mail coach was an icon of Swiss national identity — connecting communities across the most forbidding Alpine terrain — and Koller returned to it repeatedly because it crystallized his twin interests: animal movement and Swiss landscape. The 1873 Kunsthaus Zürich version represents the composition in an earlier state, possibly painted from direct observation on the pass itself. Koller's contemporaries recognized these Gotthard Post paintings immediately as defining images of Swiss life, and the Kunsthaus's decision to acquire this version signals the esteem in which the subject was held. By the time the Gotthard Railway opened in 1882, Koller's paintings had ensured that the horse-drawn era would not be forgotten.

Compared to the 1874 version, this canvas may show slightly looser handling in some passages, consistent with a work used to develop the final composition. The horses' forms are energetically blocked in with confident brushwork, and the harness details are rendered with the same accuracy for which Koller was renowned. The sky is handled with broad, fluid strokes.