The Jungfrau seen from Isenfluh

In July 1902 Hodler was lodging down in the Kander valley and kept climbing up to Isenfluh, a tiny hamlet on a shelf above the Lauterbrunnen valley, to paint the Jungfrau. The peak rises to 4,158 metres, and he set its rock and ice floating above a long belt of cloud, with the green wooded slopes falling away below. Within months the picture travelled to Vienna, to the 19th exhibition of the Secession, the group around the painter Gustav Klimt that had taken Hodler up as a favourite guest. What the Viennese admired is easy to read here, the way he tidies a real alpine view into broad, calm bands of colour. The cloud sits like a floor under the mountain, holding it up.