Ferdinand Hodler
Ferdinand Hodler was one of the bestknown Swiss painters of the nineteenth century. His early works were portraits, landscapes, and genre paintings in a realistic style. Later, he adopted a personal form of symbolism he called Parallelism.
Hodler was born in Berne, the eldest of six children. His father, Jean Hodler, made a meager living as a carpenter his mother, Marguerite , was from a peasant family. By the time Hodler was eight years old, he had lost his father and two younger brothers to tuberculosis. His mother remarried to a decorative painter, but in 1867 she too died of tuberculosis. Eventually the disease killed all of Hodlers remaining siblings, instilling in the artist a powerful consciousness of mortality.
Source: Wikipedia