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 :. | Genfersee am Abend von Chexbres aus | Genfersee von Chexbres aus | The Halberdier | Eiger Monch und Jungfrau uber dem Nebelmeer | Gurzelen |
Related Artists:
Simon Hollosy
1857-1918 Hungarian Simon Hollosy Gallery Simon Hollosy (Romanian: Simion Corbu); (2 February 1857, Maramarossziget, now Sighetu Marmatiei - 8 May 1918, Tecso, now Tiachiv) was a Hungarian painter. He was considered one of the greatest Hungarian representatives of 19th century Naturalism and Realism. Holl??sy came from an Armenian family who settled in Maramarossziget (present-day Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania). He frequently worked abroad. He criticized training at the Academy and founded a private school in 1886 where he gathered young talents around him who were interested in realistic protrayal. He opened the way to new styles by relying on his personality and by pointing out the merits of French pictures (Courbet) exhibited in Munich. He abandoned the academic style in order to follow new trends in French painting. Encouraged by Istvan Reti and Janos Thorma, his pupils and friends, he spent the summer of 1896 in Nagyb??nya (present-day Baia Mare, Romania) with his school, which played an important role in Hungarian painting as the cradle of the Nagybanya school. He soon settled down in Nagybanya. With its style (sunny landscapes), his school determined Hungarian painting for decades. Leaving the Nagyb??nya colony in 1901, he spent the summers in Tecso with his students from 1902. During winters he was in Munich to run his school there. He was not productive as an artist: he was in search of atmospheres and his productivity was confined to teaching. His large scale plan of "Rakoczi March" with a lot of figures got as far sketches because he kept on changing his mind. The landscapes painted in Tecso include "Landscape in T??cső", "Landscape with Stacks and Sunset with Stacks", where he applied elements of plein air and impressionism. His self-portrait (1916) is one of his most harrowing pictures.
Juan Fernandez de Navarrete
Spanish painter 1526-1579 was a Spanish Mannerist painter, born at Logroño. An illness in infancy deprived Navarrete of his hearing, but at a very early age he began to express his wants by sketching objects with a piece of charcoal. He received his first instructions in art from Fray Vicente de Santo Domingo, a Hieronymite monk at Estella, and also with Becerra. He visited Naples, Rome, Florence and Milan. Pellegrino Tibaldi met him in Rome in 1550. According to most accounts he was for a considerable time the pupil and assistant of Titian at Venice. In 1568 Philip II of Spain summoned him to Madrid with the title of king's painter and a salary, and employed him to execute pictures for the Escorial. During the 1560s and 1570s the huge monastery-palace of El Escorial was still under construction and Philip II was experiencing difficulties in finding good artists for the many large paintings required to decorate it. Titian was very old, and died in 1576, and Tintoretto, Veronese and Anthonis Mor all refused to come to Spain. Philip had to rely on the lesser talent of Navarrete, whose gravedad y decoro ("seriousness and decorum") the king approved. For eleven years until his death Navarrete worked largely on El Escorial. The most celebrated of the works he produced there are a "Nativity" (in which, as in the well-known work on the same subject by Correggio, the light emanates from the infant Saviour), a "Baptism of Christ" (now Prado), and "Abraham Receiving the Three Angels" (one of his last works, dated 1576).
Janos Donat
1744-1830 Hungarian Janos Donat Location Donat was born in Klosterneuzell in 1744 and learned painting at M. Meytens, V. Fischer and Sambach in Vienna where he lived for some time and later Prague. In Vienna he became interested in painting portraits. After moving to Pest in 1810 he painted some of his most noted classicist portraits such as Ferenc Kazinczy in 1812 and Benedek Virag in 1815. He was also noted for his compositions such as Resting Venus, Orfeus and Euridike, and Proserpina which were paintings of mythological creatures.