St. Gotthard Post

"St. Gotthard Post" is a loose copy of the most complex painting by Swiss artist Rudolf Koller (1828 - 1905), who painted in realist, romantic, and classicist styles (often depicting Swiss mountain landscapes, horses, and cows). He was also an innovator, often painting symbolic subjects. The painting is kept in the Zurich Art Museum. The painting is a symbol shows the inevitability of processes and development. Nothing can stop progress. Acceleration in society is associated with immediate danger. And meanwhile, one cannot but note the artistic value of the painting, which is so realistic and filled with movement that when you stop in front of it, you begin to hear the sounds: the roaring of horses and the stomping of their hooves, the rumble of wheels, the whistle of the whip and the mooing of cows. And you can smell the hot road dust. The painting depicts a mail carriage rushing along a mountain road. The two neds in the back give the impression of being rather docile, while the dazzling white horses with fluttering manes rush furiously forward. The letter carrier sits strangely calm and even drives the harness. The calf in front of the postal stagecoach, running away from danger, gives an acute sense of threat as a potential victim. Fear for this mooing animal awakens in the viewer a protest and critical attitude to speed, while the white stallions galloping away evoke an equally strong feeling of admiration. The viewer's oppression of the scene in the painting is intensified by the idiotically frozen cows. Where there is an increase in speed, there are also stragglers, the underdogs, the losers. The artist could have portrayed the cows as an idyllic distant background: showing them grazing peacefully in a green meadow, leading a timeless existence, unaffected by the rushing vanity that passes by. But in the painting the animals are disturbed and, huddled together, stand in a cloud of dust on the roadside and on the road itself. The disheveled cow herd epitomizes the blasted idyll. If the painting were a peaceful, idyllic Swiss landscape, the horses would run at a cozy trot, the cows would graze peacefully beside the road, and the letter carrier would surely blow his postal horn. But there is a clear sense of threat to the animals in the painting, so it should be seen as a symbol of the inevitability of change in society. Sometimes this rickety carriage, harnessed with three white horses rushing unstoppably, is compared to the horses of the solar god Phaeton, son of Helios, who failed to cope with his father's horses and together with the whole shining harness collapsed into the abyss. Interesting fact: in 2013, the Swiss Mint minted a 50-franc commemorative coin with a reproduction of this painting.