The Grand Muveran 1911

Ferdinand Hodler gave us The Grand Muveran, probably with oils on canvas, and it’s all about these big, kind of blocky shapes forming a mountain range. I’m imagining him, maybe outside, trying to capture this massive thing in front of him, but he's also making something totally new on the canvas. Look at those blues and purples, so cool and calming, and then that pale, almost sickly yellow sky. I can almost feel him mixing those colors, trying to get the light just right, swiping the brush back and forth to get those edges sharp. The surface is relatively smooth, but you can definitely see the strokes, each one a decision, a feeling, laid down. That big peak in the center—it’s like he’s saying, “Here I am, world.” It connects to the way other painters, like Cézanne, were trying to find the structure in nature, not just copying what they saw, but making sense of it in their own way. It is all part of this ongoing conversation between artists, trying to figure out how to capture the world, or maybe just their own experience of it.