Heilige Stunde

Material

Oil on canvas; 180 x 90 cm

Dating

1910

About the artwork

Ferdinand Hodler was known as a meticulous artist, who did not leave anything to chance when it came to his paintings. He did countless preliminary sketches for every painting. First he determined the overall composition of the painting in his sketchbook, then he started to finalise the individual figures with the help of models. Additionally, Hodler used silhouettes, sometimes in a ratio 1:1, to put the arrangement of the figures to the test. He did that in the present painting, too, which, in its final version, consists of six sitting women. The single figure shown here is a thorough oil study, which Hodler used to review the individual movements and gestures with regard to the large scale painting.
The intense gestures and facial expressions of the figure make the composition look static and dynamic at the same time. The detailed drapery, the blue robe and the thornless roses are reminiscent of late Gothic Madonnas in the hortus conclusus, the enclosed garden. The work’s title supports this notion. The ancient motif of the hortus conclusus dates back to an interpretation of the Song of Songs in the Old Testament and later became the motif of many paintings of the Virgin Mary. Most of them show the Virgin Mary with child in an enclosed garden with different flowers. Thereby, the white Madonna Lily symbolises virginity and the thornless roses stand for inexhaustible mercifulness.
But whereas the Madonna in the hortus conclusus refers to the Christian doctrine of salvation, the model of the ‘Holy Hour’ attends a prayer, which does not belong to a certain religion, but to a universal pantheistic experience of nature. The sitting woman does not only pay homage to nature’s beauty, she herself is a part of nature – like so many women in symbolist depictions of the 19th century – and thus, can be seen a symbol for Hodler’s emphatic belief in the unity of mankind and nature.

About the artist

Coming from a poor background, Ferdinand Hodler grew up in Bern as the oldest of six children. In 1860 his father died from tuberculosis and until 1885 the disease took also his mother and all of his siblings. In 1861 his mother married the ornamental painter Gottlieb Schüpbach, who introduced Hodler to painting. In 1867 he became an apprentice to the veduta painter Ferdinand Sommer in Thun. There he worked as a decorative artist and helped with the serial production of souvenir landscapes. In 1871, a destitute Ferdinand Hodler moved to Geneva, scratching a living with different painting jobs and by selling small landscapes. Barthelemy Menn, a professor at the Geneva school of arts, recognised Hodler’s talent and took him under his wings.
In 1874, he compiled the ‘ten commandments by the painter Ferdinand Hodler’ which he regarded as his basic principles henceforth. The commandments included precise observation, abstraction of the motif, examination of the motif in regard to area and outline and the use of measuring instruments during the painting process.
In 1876 Hodler had his first national exhibition and in 1881 he exhibited for the first time in London and displayed a self-portrait at the Salon de Paris. In 1886 he had his first solo exhibition in Berne, consisting of 60 paintings. In 1904 the 19th exhibition of the Austrian Association of Artists, displaying all of Hodler’s major paintings, opened its doors and paved the way for his international success. When the Kunsthaus Zurich showed a major retrospective with 606 paintings in 1917, he finally received the unanimous national recognition which he deserved.