Description

Gustav Klimt 1917 ‘Unfinished Portrait of a Lady’

Black and color crayon drawing study on light weight cream paper

Dated 1917, Gustav Klimt’s’unfinished portrait of a lady’ belongs to the late activity of the artist. By that time, Klimt had abandoned the shiny gilded decorations characteristic of his so-called ‘Golden Phase’, to adopt a less precious style.

This unfinished portrait from the last year of Klimt’s life makes it possible to see something of his working methods. When the outline of the figure is in place, the face is worked on first; then comes the accompanying decor.

The freshness of the coloring in this work, left incomplete upon the death of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), lends its vibrancy. The only part to be painted with any degree of “finish” is the very palely made-up face. In the state in which it is preserved, the picture has less the appearance of a painting than of a drawing.

The original portrait, painted in 1917 and including the study, belongs to a group of paintings that were left in Klimt’s studio after his death in 1918.

The final and original but still unfinished artwork is in the ‘Neue Galerie des Stadt Linz’ (Wolfgang-Gurlitt-Museum), Linz, Austria

Artwork on sale is the only known study ever made for this portrait and the study, for whatever the reason, just as the original work in progress, abruptly stopped

Size of the artwork : 28 x 21 cm

Artwork was bought during a Charity Auction at the Rockefeller Plaza Center and comes with documents and invoice from the Center

Artwork is in excellent condition

Info on Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d’art. Klimt’s primary subject was the female body, his works are marked by a frank eroticism.

Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, near Vienna in Austria-Hungary, the second of seven children. His mother, Anna Klimt, had an unrealized ambition to be a musical performer. His father, Ernst Klimt the Elder, formerly from Bohemia, was a gold engraver. All three of their sons displayed artistic talent early on. Klimt’s younger brothers were Ernst Klimt and Georg Klimt.

Klimt lived in poverty while attending the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts (Kunstgewerbeschule), where he studied architectural painting until 1883. He revered Vienna’s foremost history painter of the time, Hans Makart. Klimt readily accepted the principles of a conservative training; his early work may be classified as academic. In 1877 his brother, Ernst, who, like his father, would become an engraver, also enrolled in the school. The two brothers and their friend, Franz Matsch, began working together and by 1880 they had received numerous commissions as a team that they called the “Company of Artists”. They also helped their teacher in painting murals in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Klimt began his professional career painting interior murals and ceilings in large public buildings on the Ringstraße, including a successful series of “Allegories and Emblems”.

In 1888 Klimt received the Golden Order of Merit from Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria for his contributions to murals painted in the Burgtheater in Vienna. He also became an honorary member of the University of Munich and the University of Vienna. In 1892 Klimt’s father and brother Ernst both died, and he had to assume financial responsibility for his father’s and brother’s families. The tragedies also affected his artistic vision and soon he would move towards a new personal style.

In the early 1890s Klimt met Emilie Louise Flöge who, notwithstanding the artist’s relationships with other women, was to be his companion until the end of his life. Whether his relationship with Flöge was sexual or not is debated. His painting, The Kiss (1907–08), is thought to be an image of them as lovers. He designed many costumes she created and modeled in his works. During this period Klimt fathered at least fourteen children.

Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group’s periodical, Ver Sacrum (“Sacred Spring”). He remained with the Secession until 1908. The goals of the group were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the works of the best foreign artists to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase the work of members.

In 1894, Klimt was commissioned to create three paintings to decorate the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. Not completed until the turn of the century, his three paintings, Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence were criticized for their radical themes and material, and were called “pornographic”. Klimt had transformed traditional allegory and symbolism into a new language that was more overtly sexual and hence more disturbing to some. The public outcry came from all quarters—political, aesthetic and religious. As a result, the paintings were not displayed on the ceiling of the Great Hall. This would be the last public commission accepted by the artist.

Klimt’s ‘Golden Phase’ was marked by positive critical reaction and financial success. Many of his paintings from this period include gold leaf. Klimt had previously used gold in his Pallas Athene (1898) and Judith I (1901), although the works most popularly associated with this period are the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907–08).

Klimt travelled little, but trips to Venice and Ravenna, both famous for their beautiful mosaics, most likely inspired his gold technique and his Byzantine imagery. In 1904, he collaborated with other artists on the lavish Palais Stoclet, the home of a wealthy Belgian industrialist that was one of the grandest monuments of the Art Nouveau age. Klimt’s contributions to the dining room, including both Fulfillment and Expectation, were some of his finest decorative works, and as he publicly stated, “probably the ultimate stage of my development of ornament.”

In 1911 his painting Death and Life received first prize in the world exhibitions in Rome. In 1915 Anna, his mother, died. Klimt died three years later in Vienna on February 6, 1918, having suffered a stroke and pneumonia due to the influenza epidemic of that year. He was buried at the Hietzinger Cemetery in Hietzing, Vienna. Numerous paintings by him were left unfinished.