At first glance, Ferdinand Hodler’s oil painting “The Chosen One” (1893-1894) seems to be rather flat and unexciting, particularly when viewed from a 21st century perspective. However, closer examination reveals a great deal of extra detail that conveys a lot about what the artist might have been feeling and thinking in the creation of this painting. Hodler was known as one of his eras greatest symbolists, so it is responsible to look for what sort of symbolism he might have included in the image as one looks for the various painterly elements that he employed to bring about the effect he desired.
The painting essentially depicts the image of a small naked boy, perhaps a little too skinny, kneeling on wet ground in front of a small barren tree. This tree appears to be growing out of a square patch of raised grassland framed by small white ovoid stones. Entwined in the branches of this small tree is a thin sliver of a snake. The surrounding landscape reveals a pockmarked landscape full of dandelion-covered grasslands, small puddles of water, slightly rolling hills and a few dark boulders along the hill line. The dandelions are identifiable in their gone-to-seed stage in which the flower heads have been replaced by circular puffballs ready to fly on the winds and plant new roots.
The child seems to be in a relatively prayerful position, kneeling on the ground and with his hands brought together in front of his body. However, he is looking up, craning his neck backward to look at the faces of the six blue-clad angels who have appeared around him, hovering over the ground and looking down on the boy with compassion and love. Each of the angels bears a striking resemblance to the others and four of them carry flowers they seem to be presenting to the boy.
Without going into deep research regarding the symbolism of the piece, it is impossible not to see the spiritual or Biblical connections being made. The boy is confronting the remnants of the Tree of Life from the Garden of Eden, as is shown through the presence of the small snake and the walled ‘garden’ while the landscape behind him illustrates the birth of a new world in the presence of abundant water, growing grasslands and flowers gone to seed. The angels appear blessing the new beginning, setting the child up as a representation of Jesus by delivering to him the various flowers of the earth. The idea that these are intended to be elements of the divine is reinforced by the artist’s use of line, shape, color, texture and space.
The painting presents a very stable, static image to the viewer in its strong vertical lines introduced by the characters and horizontal orientation as presented in the background. The straight up and down lines of the angels, uninterrupted even by the tiny feathered wings rising from their shoulders, take on the basic form of columns such as might have been used in Greek temples to denote places of divine worship.
This shape is echoed in the forms of the child and the tree, one a representation of life and the other a representation of death (in its barren state) and the fall of man (in its relationship to the Tree of Life indicated in the presence of the snake). The lack of diagonals in the piece gives it its static quality, seeming to be a moment frozen in time, when the innocence of the youth presents the opportunity for a new beginning.
The entire picture plane is suffused with an overall blue tint, which relates it gently with common colors of the Virgin Mary as a sign of purity and royalty. While the Virgin Mary was frequently depicted in darker shades of blue, the light blues of the angels’ dresses serve to repeat the blues of the sky and reinforce their otherworldly origin. They are also draped with long flowing white robes, which fall to the ground in heaps, reinforcing the concept of the Greek columns while emphasizing the idea of purity in that their feet never touch the ground. Even the green of the grass appears slightly blue, giving the painting a sense of occurring at dawn or dusk when the light in the sky hasn’t yet fully reached the ground and again suggesting the concept of the birth of a new day.
It is difficult to tell the physical texture of a piece when viewing images of it online, but the suggested texture remains relatively flat within its space. The angels wings are provided with suggestions of feathers and their robes fall in graceful piles of cloth on the ground, but much of the detail seems left out. The landscape behind the angels seems to rumple up into small hills that quickly smooth out to a further, drier, green field in the distance. While the earth seems more than ready to bring forth new life, little life is actually seen in this background with the sole exception of the grass.
Reinforced by line, shape, color, texture and space, Hodler’s painting “The Chosen One” emerges as an exploration into new beginnings as they are represented by the child. Although he is related to Jesus in the Biblical symbolisms that occur within the painting, this child also indicates that all children have a tremendous potential within them to be the chosen one and to be the new beginning. It’s somewhat blue tones, while relating it to divinity, also serve to suggest the other side of the hope in the image, which is that this child is equally as capable of losing hope, falling into despair and disgrace and bringing about the fall of man, as he sits contemplating the angels and the tree.