Lake Geneva from Chexbres

Ferdinand Hodler painted the view from the village of Chexbres, on the terraced slopes above Lake Geneva, about thirteen times between 1895 and 1911, and this is one of that group. He returned to the same spot because of what he called Parallelism, his own name for the way nature repeats similar forms, which he treated as the guiding idea of his art for most of his career. Hodler had a harsh start: he was born near Bern in 1853, his father died when he was small, his mother when he was thirteen, and tuberculosis took the rest of his family. He arrived in Geneva in 1871 with no money and supported himself painting shop signs and tourist views while he learned French. From 1871 to 1876 he trained under the painter Barthélemy Menn, who introduced him to the work of Corot, Delacroix and Ingres. After his first solo exhibition in 1885 his painting turned towards Symbolism, a way of working that used simplified, often symmetrical arrangements to suggest ideas and feelings rather than record a scene. By the time of this painting he was the best-known artist in Switzerland, and the lake had become the subject he tested his ideas on.