LECLAIRE@LECLAIRE-.DE WWW.LECLAIRE-.DE
FERDINAND HODLER 1853 Bern Geneva 1918 Giulia Leonardi Oil on canvas. Signed lower right F. Hodler. Executed c.1910-11. 45.0 x 40.5 cm PROVENANCE: Galerie Moos, Geneva Private collection, Switzerland EXHIBITIONS: Galerie Moos, Ferdinand Hodler, Geneva 1918, no. 89 Biennale di Venezia, XIIme Esposizione internationale d arte della città di Venezia, Venice 1920, no. 25 Galerie Commeter, 100 Jahre Galerie Commeter, Hamburg 1921, no. 143 Kunstmuseum Bern, Hodler Gedächtnisausstellung, Bern 1921, no. 425 Moderne Galerie Thannhauser, Ferdinand Hodler, Munich 1925, no. 33 or 34 Galerie Ernst Arnold, Mai-Ausstellung. Ferdinand Hodler, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Huf, Dresden 1925, no. 25 (?) Kunstmuseum Solothurn and Bucerius Kunstforum Hamburg, Ferdinand Hodler und Cuno Amiet. Eine Künstlerfreundschaft zwischen Jugendstil und Moderne. Munich 2011-12, p. 175, no. 86 LITERATURE: C. A. Loosli, Ferdinand Hodler, Leben-Werk-Nachlass, IV, no. 1026 Werner Y. Müller, Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers. Gesamtdarstellung. Band 2. Reife und Spätwerk 1895-1918, Zurich 1941, p. 191, repr. p. 488 Ferdinand Hodler und Cuno Amiet. Eine Künstlerfreundschaft zwischen Jugendstil und Moderne, exhib. cat., Bucerius Kunstforum Hamburg and Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Munich 2011-12, p. 175, no. 86, repr. Oskar Bätschmann, Monika Brunner and Bernadette Walter, Ferdinand Hodler - Catalogue raisonné der Gemälde, Band 2, Die Bildnisse, Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Zurich 2012, p. 232, no. 858, repr. p. 233 LECLAIRE@LECLAIRE-.DE WWW.LECLAIRE-.DE
In Switzerland, Ferdinand Hodler s work has national heritage status and his iconic motifs are omnipresent. In Germany, he shot to fame only in the wake of a series of major exhibitions and a burst of critical acclaim in France and Austria around 1910. He well understood the mechanics of exhibiting and supplied all exhibitors with a generous number of works much in the manner of Courbet and Manet with their expositions payantes. He actively sought out every opportunity to present his work to the public. He was not shy to use scandal as a tool to promote his painting. 1 Up to 1914 his work was to appear in countless exhibitions and he was invited to join numerous avant-garde artists associations the Berlin and the Vienna Secessions in 1900, and the Munich Secession and the Weimar-based Deutscher Künstlerbund in 1903. Fig. 1: Anonymous Photographer, Hodler-Ehrensaal, XIX exhibition of the Vienna Secession, 1904 Hodler s first artistic and commercial breakthrough came in 1904 when he exhibited thirty-one paintings at the Vienna Secession [Fig. 1]. 2 His impact on Austrian contemporary art was to prove very significant. A juxtaposition between Klimt s magnificent Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907) and Hodler s Portrait of Gertrud Müller (1911) points up the extraordinary modernity of Hodler s work [Figs. 2 and 3]. Following the 1904 breakthrough, collecting interest accelerated. The Geneva newspaper Tribune de Genève, in a 1912 comment, noted: Hodler s oeuvre is like a blue-chip stock! Everyone s speculating [ ]. It s a raging fever, it s Hodler mania. 3 In Germany, Hodler s success reached a peak in 1911. 4 Max Liebermann was instrumental in obtaining him a commission from the city of Hanover in the same year to paint a monumental mural for the conference chamber of the new city hall. And his work was shown at important commercial exhibitions in Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich. 5 Demand for his paintings reached record levels. 6 The continuing importance of Hodler s work was underlined by the exhibition of fortyone of his key paintings featured among them were the present Portrait of Giulia Leonardi, together with major works like The Woodcutter (1910) and View of Lake Geneva (1915) 7 in the Padiglione Svizzero at the 12th international Biennale in Venice in 1920. It was Switzerland s first appearance at the Biennale. LECLAIRE@LECLAIRE-.DE WWW.LECLAIRE-.DE
Fig. 2: Gustav Klimt (1862 1918), Fig. 3: Portrait of Gertrud Müller, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, oil on canvas, 1907. oil on canvas, 1911. Neue Galerie, New York Kunstmuseum Solothurn However, until very recently, only a handful of museums and collectors outside Switzerland have specialized in Swiss painting. Hodler s work had largely escaped serious international attention until a real shift in interest in his role as the leading Swiss modernist occurred, particularly when the Musée d Orsay staged a major exhibition of his work in 2008. 8 In 2012, New York s Metropolitan Museum purchased one of Hodler s most important symbolic images, the painting titled Le rêve de pâtre (1896). 9 The Art Institute of Chicago now holds the largest collection of his works in the United States. A small group of American private collectors are among the increasing number of non-swiss buyers of work by Swiss modernists like Hodler, Amiet and the Giacomettis. The exhibition staged at the Neue Galerie in New York in 2012, focusing on Hodler s late work, made a groundbreaking contribution to his recognition as a pioneer and champion of modernism. 10 Fig. 4: Woman in Ecstasy (Two Versions), 1910. Photograph taken at the exhibition Ferdinand Hodler View to Infinity, Neue Galerie, New York 2012 LECLAIRE@LECLAIRE-.DE WWW.LECLAIRE-.DE
A chance encounter at the Café de la Bohème in Geneva in 1910 was to lead to the present portrait. The sitter, an Italian singer and guitarist and owner of the café named Giulia Leonardi was one half of a musical double act. 11 It was the impact of Leonardi s fiery temperament rather than her physical appearance she was slightly disabled that drew Hodler to request that she sit for him. Over a period of several months her powerful personality inspired him to produce a series of nineteen portraits which ranged from pencil sketches and studies to full-length paintings. She also modelled for the various versions of his celebrated painting titled Woman in Ecstasy (1911) 12 [Fig. 4] and for the single-figure version of The Holy Hour, now held at the Kunstmuseum in Glarus, Switzerland. Hodler also portrayed the force of Leonardi s emotionality in a large number of other head-andshoulders sketches and oil studies. Hodler saw Giulia Leonardi as a high-spirited, extroverted individual who combined femininity with extraordinary emotional intensity [Fig. 5]. Her appearance fascinated him. Her huge eyes and arched brows, her unruly black hair, her prominent nose, sensuous mouth and oval, almond-shaped face moved him to paint her again and again, providing a visual record of her changing moods and emotions. To ensure that she was available to sit for him at all times he would pay her five francs a day on days when she did not sit for him. This portrait of Giulia Leonardi is a fine example of Hodler s mature style. The composition of the portrait shows only a small area of shoulder and this underlines the unconventionality and originality of his approach. In his response both to the beauty of the subject13 and to her personality he achieves a powerful symbiosis a symbiosis whose quality and expressive content are rarely found in related portraits of Leonardi. Here Hodler approaches his subject with a new intimacy and his interpretation of the emotionality of the sitter shows striking freedom and directness of execution. The remarkable provenance of the painting and its lengthy and well-documented exhibition history testify to its central importance in Hodler s oeuvre. The painting is registered in the archives of the Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft in Zurich as an original work by Ferdinand Hodler (no. 37868). Fig. 5: Anonymous photographer, Giulia Leonardi. Archive of Aimée Leonardi, Ascona LECLAIRE@LECLAIRE-.DE WWW.LECLAIRE-.DE
1 Oskar Bätschmann, The Artist in the Modern World. The Conflict between Market and Self-Expression, New Haven and London 1997. 2 Sabine Grabner, Ferdinand Hodler und seine Beziehung zu Wien in Ferdinand Hodler und Wien, exhib. cat., Österreichische Galerie, Oberes Belvedere, Vienna 1993, p. 22. 3 Louis Baudit, Ferdinand Hodler in ABC Seul quotidien illustré de la Suisse, 6-7 July 1912. 4 Ortrud Westheider, Ferdinand Hodler und Cuno Amiet. Zwei Schweizer Karrieren im deutschen Kunstbetrieb, in exhib. cat., Ferdinand Hodler und Cuno Amiet. Eine Künstlerfreundschaft zwischen Jugendstil und Moderne. Bucerius Kunstforum Hamburg and Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Munich 2011-12, p. 56 ff. 5 In Munich, at the Moderne Galerie Thannhauser. 6 Oskar Bätschmann, Hodlers Fall Zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland in Ferdinand Hodler Die Forschung Die Anfänge Die Arbeit Der Erfolg Der Kontext (text volume titled Outlines), Schweizerisches Institut für Kunstwissenschaft (SIK-ISEA), Zurich 2009, pp. 197-214. 7 For Switzerland s participation at the Biennale, see www.biennale-venezia.ch/biennale. aspx?id=13734789 (accessed 22.08.2014). 8 Ferdinand Hodler, exhib. cat., Musée d Orsay, Paris 2008. 9 Der Traum des Hirten [The shepherd s dream], 1896, oil on canvas, 250.2 x 130.5 cm, inv. 2013.1134. Christie s, Zurich, auction sale, Swiss Art, 11 December 2013, lot 34. 10 Ulf Küster, Ferdinand Hodler - Series and Variations in Ferdinand Hodler - View to Infinity, exhib. cat., Neue Galerie, New York 2012, 12. 11 Illustrierte Familienzeitschrift, 16, Geneva, 20 May 1938, p. 374. 12 Private collection. See Ferdinand Hodler Eine symbolische Vision, exhib. cat., Kunstmuseum Bern and elsewhere, 2008, p. 268, no. 98, repr. Other versions of the painting are held at the Musée d Art et d Histoire, Geneva and at the Kunstmuseum in Solothurn. 13 See Götz Czymmek, Der Fall Hodler in Köln in Kölner Museum Bulletin, Berichte und Forschungen aus den Museen der Stadt Köln, 4/1998, Cologne 1998, pp.21-6. 120 Meisterwerke der Gemäldesammlung, exhib. cat., Wallraf Richartz Museum, Cologne 1986, p.236. The city of Zurich acquired a study titled Head of an Italian Woman (Giulia Leonardi) in 1939. The painting is a portrait of Leonardi showing her in a strict three-quarter pose. LECLAIRE@LECLAIRE-.DE WWW.LECLAIRE-.DE