Lake Thun with Symmetrical Reflection

Ferdinand Hodler is one of the most important artists of Switzerland in the 19th century. The painter is generally associated with the temporally overlapping art movements Symbolism and Art Nouveau. While symbolistic elements in his landscape depiction "Thunersee mit symmetrischer Spiegelung" are more rarely sown, the 1905 created painting defies Art Nouveau motives and themes. The title of the work already refers to the era of art history, when the arts at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were characterized by stylistic elements such as floral ornaments, curved lines and symmetrical forms.

"Thunersee with symmetrical reflection" is structured symmetrically in several ways. The image contents are arranged axially symmetrically both horizontally and vertically. In the middle of the picture, two mountain massifs face each other. Their vertical symmetry is taken up in their reflection in the water. At the same time, the water reflection of the mountains marks a symmetry in the horizontal. This is repeated in further opposing motifs. Thus, the clouds shown at the top of the picture are opposite the green meadow at the bottom of the picture.

Hodler also makes extensive use of ornamentation. The moment of water reflection is the artist's pretext for the style element of the decorative-curved line. The waves of the water create at the edges of the mirrored mountains several spikes, which in their accumulation bring to the picture another aesthetic element, namely the rhythmic arrangement. That too fits the Art Nouveau: the moment of repetition. The fact that Hodler does not have to motivate the curved line can be seen in the way he paints the clouds. Again, line and abstraction dominate.

As a human being and above all as an artist, Ferdinand Hodler was a life-long search for the truth. In nature he believed he had found her. To capture the truth in his pictures, however, he had to go beyond pure illustration. Like Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin, with whom he has a lot in common, Hodler did justice to the truth by deforming and abstracting nature. The image order was for Hodler an answer to the natural order.