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Woodcutter

Ferdinand Hodler • Painting, 1910, 130.8×100.7 cm
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About the artwork
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Portrait
Style of art: Art Nouveau
Technique: Oil
Materials: Canvas
Date of creation: 1910
Size: 130.8×100.7 cm
Artwork in selections: 7 selections
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Description of the artwork «Woodcutter»

In 19th century Switzerland, you would need a higher economical to buy bread or a pair of trousers. The monetary system of this country until the beginning of the XX century remained one of the most complex and confusing. Just imagine: every canton, half-canton and even a separate city or abbey could let out their money. In addition, each merchant imported into the country coins of other states (French, German, Belgian, Greek) - and they, too, were easily received from buyers. You could play for a couple of fish with a coin minted in France and get a handful of coins minted in the French canton of Switzerland, then in German. Every second bank issued, among other things, its own banknotes. And even when in 1850 a single monetary system was adopted for the whole country, they continued to use coins from other countries.

Precisely because Switzerland needed its own, first, unique national banknotes, the country's national bank turned to the artist for help. The most famous. Ferdinand Hodler. In 1908, Hodler received an order for two images - for the first national banknotes, 50 and 100 francs. No precise instructions followed, except that it must be motives obviously expressing Swiss identity and national character.

In 1911, the first national denominations of 50 and 100 francs came out with images of a woodcutter and the reaperthat created Hodler. He already had experience with national types and historically important projects. Working on a mural “Retreat at Marignano”, the artist was looking for examples of national types, old warrior heroes, among his contemporaries and found them: “Men of those times still exist. They today, like hundreds of years ago, are waging the same struggle. The descendants of those healthy and strong people can still be found in the villages and in the mountains. Stubborn, strong Swiss - the man I found in these places".

Just monumental works, short frescoes for the walls of museums, universities and town halls, glorified Hodler. It was in large-scale works that he shifted the ideas of his contemporaries about correct painting: he even saved specific historical events from the plot - and achieved the necessary heroic pathos through rhythmic composition and expressive poses. Therefore, it is not surprising that “The Woodcutter” and “The Reaper”, reduced to the scale of a bill, according to Hodler, have lost their intended iconographic, monumentality.

And despite the fact that the customer, the National Bank of Switzerland, arranged everything (and the bills remained in circulation until 1958), Hodler decides to rectify the situation. He writes a dozen of pictorial versions of both paintings — usually each about a meter and a half and a half. And in them, at last, national character, strength, and health become tangible. Hodler mentioned more than once that there is no better symbol for depicting a man than a tree - and therefore all his tree landscapes (1, 2) should be perceived as an allegory of human strength, stubbornness, desire for light. And in "Woodcutter" the human figure is itself both a man and a tree, which he will have to defeat. A man firmly buried in the ground with his feet. The man whom nature feeds. A man who himself is part of nature. Manpower versus manpower.

Author: Anna Sidelnikova
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