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Night
Ferdinand Hodler · Symbolism & Art Nouveau
- Artist
- Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918)
- Date
- 1889–1890
- Dimensions
- 116.5 x 299 cm
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Location
- Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland
Night shows several men and women asleep on dark cloths on the ground, arranged side by side in a long frieze. In the centre, one naked man has woken in terror: a figure shrouded in black crouches on top of him in the dark.
A closer look
The black-shrouded figure is a personification of death, coming suddenly in the night. The terrified man is a self-portrait of Hodler, and the woman sleeping beside him is his companion at the time. The surrounding sleepers, calm and unaware, are arranged in a carefully balanced, almost symmetrical composition, a principle Hodler called 'parallelism', the repetition of similar forms to create rhythm and unity. The painting marks Hodler's turn from realism to Symbolism, exploring the great themes of life, love and death.
