Portrait of Valentine Godé-Darel, 1912

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) showed the distinctive profile of his lover in his 1912 Portrait of Valentine Godé-Darel with sharply contouring outlines, while at the same time rendering her gaunt features and her thick, full hair, tied into a coil and emphasized in its volume, in a three-dimensional manner by means of juxtaposed brushstrokes. The oil paint, which he applied in a dry, almost chalk-like manner, helped the Swiss pioneer of Modernism bring out these brushstrokes with which he created an effect of sharp hatching. This allowed him to emphasize the three-dimensional plasticity of the object despite the quality of the portrait’s drawing. The head of the depicted is surrounded by a garland of stylized, folkloristic-looking small red roses interspersed with green foliage. The shade of yellow of the background, painted with loose, broad brushstrokes, reappears in between the pink, brown and green of the face, of the long neck slightly bent backwards and of the shoulder. The red of the dress also features in the depiction of the face and the roses. The young woman, with whom Hodler had a daughter, came into the artist’s life in 1908 as his model. Three years after the creation of this portrait she would die of the harrowing effects of a tumor. Hodler accompanied the process of Godé-Darel’s decline in all its stages, culminating in the depiction on her deeathbed.

MH, 2021