Fifteen days to give Lake Geneva a rhythm

A landscape can begin long before the painter sets up his canvas. For Ferdinand Hodler, the view from Chexbres first belongs to journeys between Bern and Geneva. From the heights of Lavaux, Lake Geneva suddenly appears in its full expanse. He knows this panorama, takes it up from 1895 and returns in spring 1904. This time, he stays. After the Vienna Secession exhibition that consolidated his European reputation, he settles at the Hôtel Bellevue in late April for about a fortnight. A stop becomes a painting project.

The painting held in Lausanne opens the new series of views. Its destination is remarkable: the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts acquires it in the very year it is made. The work therefore does not await posthumous recognition to enter the museum. The institution had already bought a Hodler landscape in 1894; it now accompanies research transforming a well-known place into a highly personal pictorial proposition. This continuity between artist and museum matters as much as the new fame gained in Vienna.

Looking at the work — In the reproduction published by the MCBA, the lake's blue occupies almost the entire width. The shore forms a curve descending on the right and returning towards the lower edge. Houses, paths and green surfaces remain legible, but small before the water. Far away, a strip of land closes the space. Above it, clouds follow one another almost along a single line; their more diffuse echoes reappear in the lake. The sky seems immense, yet the blue expanse retains the leading role. Our gaze can travel along the shore, then be brought back towards this broad, calm surface.

This organisation allows two ways into the painting. We can seek Cully, recognise the shore and follow the terraces. We can also leave place names aside to observe how forms harmonise. The lake's ellipse answers the sky's horizontality; the land's green makes the blue more palpable. No detail asks us to interrupt this circulation for long. The work thus offers geography to the walker and structure to the eye. The two experiences support one another without becoming the same.

Hodler does not confine himself to reproducing a passing impression. The Musée d'Orsay recalls that he studies sites directly, then composes landscapes where topographical observation meets simplification. His pursuit of parallelism, based on repetition and symmetry, finds particularly favourable ground in water and clouds. We need not know this theory to experience the painting. It nevertheless helps explain why a landscape seeming so open holds together so firmly.

The Chexbres stay also offers another measure of working in series. Returning to the same motif does not require producing the same experience. The place provides an anchor: what remains makes the painter's decisions more perceptible. Framing, the intensity of blue and the weight of a reflection change the relationship between land and water. In this first canvas of 1904, the elongated format encourages broad breathing. Painting organises the duration of looking as much as it describes an expanse.

It would be easy to oppose Vienna's public success to the solitude of a hotel facing the lake. The documents do not allow us to narrate exactly what Hodler feels during these days. Instead, they show the proximity of two activities: exhibiting work already completed and beginning work again before a landscape. Recognition does not close down research. In Chexbres, it coincides with a return, and this return produces a new form rather than a simple travel memory.

Today, the painting preserves something of this pause. It tells neither of the train's arrival nor the days at the hotel; it shows what a familiar place can become when granted renewed attention. The blue is not merely that of a beautiful Swiss lake. It connects the shores, clouds and time we spend before the work. Hodler's fifteen days in Chexbres thus continue in a very simple experience: staying a little longer than planned before a view we thought we knew.