The Kien Valley with the Bluemlisalp Massif

A native of Berne, Switzerland, Ferdinand Hodler spent much of 1902 in the Oberland painting mountainous landscapes. This work shows the Kien Valley looking towards the Bluemlisalp, a massif at the far end of the valley. During his artistic retreats in the Alps – not so different, in spirit, from Gauguin’s travels in the South Seas or Van Gogh’s stay in Arles – Hodler aimed to paint what he called the ‘essential structure’ of the landscape, ‘liberated from all unimportant details’. This picture – with its insistent verticality, defined fields of colour and ornamental decorative clouds – conveys a sense of timelessness, harmony and meditative stillness. ‘The landscape must have a character’, Hodler wrote, ‘express a passion or an emotion’. With a striking economy of means, in which geometry and composition don’t diminish, but rather enhance, nature’s mystical element, this painting harks back to the tradition of Japanese woodcut prints.

Text: © The National Gallery, London

Painting photographed in its frame by Google Arts & Culture, 2023.