More recently, the painting has been dated to 1896, the year it was first shown at the Swiss national exhibition in Geneva (Fischer 2009).
The Picture-Its History and Subject: Sources from the first half of the twentieth century tend to date The Dream of the Shepherd to 1893 (see, e.g., Loosli 1922). In these works, Hodler explored such universal and psychologically fraught themes as sleep, dreams, death, and love, often with erotic overtones. The Dream of the Shepherd belongs to the ambitious Symbolist compositions that established his reputation in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, on a par with Edvard Munch and Gustav Klimt. While retaining aspects of his earlier naturalism, Hodler was increasingly fascinated by allegory and abstract ideals. By the early 1880s Hodler had developed a robust Realist style, but around this time he began to frequent Symbolist circles, which brought him into closer contact with the Paris art world, most notably the paintings of Puvis de Chavannes.
Between 18 he trained with the landscapist Barthélemy Menn (1815–1893) and studied the work of Dürer and Courbet. The Artist: Born in 1853 to a carpenter in Bern, Hodler apprenticed in Thun under his stepfather, the decorative painter Gottlieb Schüpbach (1814–1873), and then with Ferdinand Sommer (1822–1901), a specialist in picturesque Alpine views, before departing in 1871 for Geneva, the artistic center of Switzerland.
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