Snow in the Engadine 1907

Ferdinand Hodler made this painting, 'Snow in the Engadine', using oils to evoke a winter landscape. The dominant colour is white, of course, but look how it shifts from blue to green in the sky, contrasting with the brown trees dotted across the foot of the Alps. Imagine Hodler, there in front of the snow, trying to capture the light. I wonder what it was like for him standing there, how cold he must have been? How do you capture something so expansive in such a small frame? The small, scratchy marks make me think about how he must have moved the paint around, maybe using a dry brush technique, layering the paint, constantly shifting it. Painters are always in conversation with each other and those who came before. Even if they don’t know it. In this piece, I feel like I am witnessing him responding to the landscape right in front of him, in an act of embodied expression, embracing the unknown.