Lake Geneva at Sunset

This painting was created after the death of Valentine Godé-Darel on January 25, 1915 in Vevey (see her portrait of 1912, inv. 1133). Two colour studies (private property; Ferdinand Hodler, exh. cat. Zurich/Berlin, Nationalgalerie/Paris, Musée du Petit Palais 1983, no. 176 f., colour ills. p. 393 f.) are considered to be preliminary stages.
In his theory of parallelism, Hodler associates the horizontal with death, in whose great unity all life returns.