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The “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser” by Gustav Klimt
A great rediscovery

Claudia Mörth-Gasser

The background to the creation of the portrait

When Gustav Klimt immortalised “Fräulein Lieser” — as the sitter is called in the first catalogue raisonné published by Fritz Novotny and Johannes Dobai in 1967² – she was a young lady of less than twenty. The notes in Klimt’s notebook from 1917 reveal further details of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the portrait: the sitter visited Klimt’s Vienna studio at Feldmühlgasse 11, Hietzing nine times in April and May 1917 to model for him.³ This usually took place in the mornings, as Klimt’s notes on the times of the visits show. A list of his earnings in his sketchbook (Fig. 13) of the same year also shows that he received two payments on account of 5,000 Kronen each for the portrait on 18th May and 27th June.⁴ The family of the sitter belonged to the wealthy Viennese upper middle class, among whom Klimt found his patrons and clients. The brothers Adolf and Justus Lieser were two of the leading industrialists of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

They had pioneered the jute and hemp industry in Austria. Thanks to the flourishing factory, “Lieser & Duschnitz, the first Austrian mechanical hemp mill, twine and rope factory” in Pöchlarn on the Danube, the family had become part of the wealthy business elite.⁵ Henriette Amalie Lieser-Landau, known as “Lilly”, was married to Justus Lieser until 1905 and was the family’s best-known art sponsor. She frequented the artistic circles of the avant-garde, was a friend of Alma Mahler’s for many years, and supported the composers Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg⁶ as a patroness of the arts.

Gustav Klimt’s reputation as a brilliant portraitist preceded him, which not only meant that he could command high prices for his paintings, but also made a portrait painted by him highly desirable to an educated, affluent public. There are suggestions that it was the art-loving Lilly Lieser who commissioned Klimt to paint a portrait.⁷ According to the latest provenance research, Klimt’s model was possibly not Margarethe Constance Lieser⁸, Lilly Lieser’s niece, but one of her two daughters either Helene, the older one, born in 1898, or her sister Annie, who was three years younger (Fig. 4).⁹

On 11th January 1918, Gustav Klimt suffered a stroke from which he never recovered. He died on 6th February 1918 and the portrait of Fräulein Lieser was one of a considerable number of paintings that Klimt left behind in his studio. The painting subsequently went to the family who had commissioned it.

The genesis of the painting: Preliminary studies

Commissioning a portrait from Klimt required not only financial backing but also patience, as Klimt was a perfectionist. He worked slowly, painting with tireless precision and preparing for his paintings with many studies. These drawings, which were an essential part of Klimt’s working process, show Klimt as a gifted graphic artist and - although they were mostly created in conjunction with paintings - have their own artistic value. There are at least 25 studies for the “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser”.¹⁰ Quite a few of these drawings today form part of important museum and private collections, including the Leopold Museum in Vienna, the Wien Museum, the Lentos Linz and the Serge Sabarsky Collection in New York.

One study from the Leopold Museum collection is remarkably portrait-like in nature (Fig. 5).¹¹ It depicts the sitter en face and seated, with her hands clasped in her lap. The cloak already contains decorative designs, which have been replaced in the painting by a rich floral pattern. In one drawing from an important private collection, Klimt varies the seated position by turning it slightly sideways, while the face remains turned towards the viewer (Fig. 6).¹² He studies the pretty facial features of his model and accentuates the expression of the eyes and the distinctive arch of the eyebrows. In this painting, it is the young woman’s alert, direct gaze that gives her a decidedly captivating presence. The wavy contour of the hair, which frames the face in a beautifully stylised way in the painted version, is also to be seen in this pencil drawing.

In a larger series of studies, Klimt explored the frontal view and the standing pose that he opted for in the painting. A privately owned drawing, which was formerly part of the artist’s estate, shows the strictly frontal composition that becomes a defining feature of the painted portrait (Fig. 7).¹³ The standing figure, over whose shoulders a shawl already reminiscent of the portrait has been draped, is cut off at the top and bottom by the edge of the paper and appears to be embedded in the surface of the picture due to its front-facing pose. Here, the oval shape of the face has been left without indicating any physiognomic features. With graphic sensitivity, Klimt uses sometimes delicate, sometimes bold lines to create a softly flowing outline, thus arriving at the wonderfully rhythmically curved contour of the sitter and her shawl in the painting.

The painting

In the end, Klimt decides upon a three-quarter portrait in a strictly front-facing pose. The sitter is placed directly in the foreground of the scene, slightly removed from the upper edge of the picture and rising up like a stele — an artistic decision that makes her almost appear to hover. This impression is reinforced by the shimmering red of the background, which provides a fascinating insight into the painting process: here and there in the red area, Klimt has sketched in ornamentation which was never executed in paint (Fig. 8).

The skin tones have been painted with precise strokes, revealing the finest nuances of colour, for example, in the flushed cheeks or the blue shades in the area of the eyes and the hairline. By contrast, one is struck by the broad brushstrokes and the partly heavy impasto application of colour in the white blouse, the loosely falling green-turquoise dress and the shawl. In the background, the brushstrokes are longer, and have been applied in a dynamic and painterly, sometimes almost a crude, manner. Here, the painting achieves an astounding immediacy, with the red on the left being more thickly applied and the primed canvas still partly visible on the right.

The ornamental motifs drawn in the red background indicate the start of elaborating a decorative design surrounding the figure. But how would Klimt have further developed these graphic outlines in painting? Other portraits of ladies from his late creative years show different design variations. One of the completed paintings is the “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer”¹⁴ (Fig. 20), which is similar to the Lieser portrait in ist front-facing pose and sweeping symmetrical contours. In the upper half of the picture, Asian figures are grouped around Elisabeth Lederer, surrounding her at a fitting distance like an aureole. The “Portrait of Ria Munk III”¹⁵, which likewise remained unfinished due to the artist’s death, features a dense, colourful arrangement of flowers. The figure of Ria Munk is enveloped in an aura of flowers, intermingled with tendrils and motifs of a profoundly symbolic nature.¹⁶ We are familiar with the exuberantly filled composition, reminiscent of a “horror vacui”, of the “Portrait of Friederike Maria Beer”¹⁷ (Fig. 27), which was completed in 1916. Again, in the painting “Lady with a Fan”¹⁸ (Fig. 11), we find a scatter pattern of symbols adapted from Asian art, strewn across a background of yellow wallpaper. Klimt’s own Asian artefacts, with which he surrounded himself in his studio in Hietzing, served as a source of inspiration for his repertoire of shapes and motifs.

There was also a carpet there designed by Josef Hoffmann, with a diamond motif in its pattern that recurs in a strikingly similar form in the Lieser portrait: Klimt has sketched the diamond with inwardly curved sides as a decorative element in the red background. The scattered linear patterns sketched into the red in the Lieser portrait suggest that Klimt would have enriched the painting with ornamental touches but was by now only missing a few background details. A rather sparse backdrop is imaginable, possibly similar to the one we know from the vibrant pink-purple upper background of the portrait of nine-year-old Mäda Primavesi (Fig. 9), which is enlivened with stylized floral motifs.

Gustav Klimt was a painter who pursued trailblazing developments and new means of artistic expression. From his Secessionist works at the beginning of Modernism to his icons of the Golden Period and his late work, he always drew on new influences to further develop his unique pictorial language. After abandoning the use of gold in his paintings, it was his encounter with the works of the Fauves and the Post-Impressionists that steered his work in a new direction in which colour took on a pictorial significance. The “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser” vividly illustrates the extent to which he embraced the power of colour and a new painterly freedom in his last paintings. The intensive colouring of the painting and the focus on light, open brushwork reveal Klimt at the height of his late creative period.

The painter’s death in February 1918 prevented the completion of the portrait. Klimt himself found it difficult to regard a painting as complete. Thus, he worked on his paintings for years, sometimes exhibiting them in an unfinished state and continuing to make changes to them later. The Lieser painting is one of those late works of Gustav Klimt whose special appeal is also partly due to the “finished or unfinished” question. While large parts of the painting can be regarded as finished, a few details still await their final realisation in paint.

The preliminary sketches in the red background suggest that Klimt would only have made very sparing additions to the picture. Yet is it not precisely the nature of the unfinished that is fascinating from today’s perspective, since it intensifies the painterly openness and expressiveness of this picture? There is no doubt that a work that is in some way “unfinished” particularly appeals to our curiosity, imagination and ability to find associations. What might Klimt have added to the painting next? Would he have offered us still more chromatic refinements? And would it have been possible for any of them to increase the breathtaking beauty of this painting, preserved in its original state?

1 Picture Archive of the Austrian National Library, Negative 113.741.
2 Novotny/Dobai 1967, No. 205, p. 367.
3 Cf. Krug, Gustav Klimt’s Last Notebook, in: Price 2007, pp. 220–221. We should like to thank Dr Hansjörg Krug for making his 2007 typescript “Gustav Klimt’s last notebook” available to us.
4 Strobl 1984, Vol. III, p. 242, Fig. c.
5 Cf. Gaugusch 2016, pp. 1899–1902.
6 Cf. Irene Suchy, “Lilly Lieser – Eine Übersehene, Eine Co-Produzentin der Schönberg’schen Musikgeschichte”, (“Lilly Lieser – An overlooked figure, a co-producer of Schönbergian music history”) in: Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 10, 2008, p. 6–16.
7 Cf. Ernst Ploil’s remarks on “Geschichte und Provenienz” (“History and Provenance”) in this catalogue. Informative are the current research and discoveries of Olga Kronsteiner, published in the newspaper “Der Standard”. Cf. Olga Kronsteiner, Die lange Reise des “Fräulein Lieser”, in: Der Standard, 20.02.2024, p. 19.
8 Alice Strobl identified the sitter as “Margarethe Constance Lieser”, cf. Strobl 1984, Vol. III, p. 112. Weidinger (2007) and Natter (2012) followed Alice Strobl’s identification of the sitter in their catalogues raisonnés.
9 Cf. Olga Kronsteiner, Freie Fahrt für Fräulein Lieser & Co bringen nur Restitutionen, in: Der Standard, 04.02.2024 (https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000205811/freie-fahrt-f252r-die-klimts, abgerufen 06.03.2024).
10 Strobl 1984, Vol. III, No. 2584–2605, pp. 120–123. We should like to thank Dr Marian Bisanz-Prakken for the valuable information that, in addition to the 22 studies published in Alice Strobl’s catalogue raisonné in connection with the “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser”, she will be including three additional sheets in the supplementary volume on the catalogue raisonné of drawings.
11 Strobl 1984, Vol. III, No. 2603, Fig. p. 123.
12 Strobl 1984, Vol. III, No. 2605, Fig. p. 123.
13 Strobl 1984, Vol. III, No. 2587, Fig. p. 121.
14 Natter 2012, No. 212.
15 Natter 2012, No. 236.
16 On the symbolism of the painting “Ria Munk III” cf. the article by Marian Bisanz- Prakken, “Ria Munk III von Gustav Klimt. Ein posthumes Bildnis neu betrachtet” (“Ria Munk III by Gustav Klimt. A new look at a posthumous portrait”), in: Parnass, issue 3/2009, Sept./Oct., p. 54–59.
17 Natter 2012, No. 145.
18 Natter 2012, No. 237.

Mag. Claudia Mörth-Gasser is an art historian and court-certified expert. She is head of the modern art department at the auction house im Kinsky

From black and white to colour: On the use of colour in the rediscovered painting “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser” by Gustav Klimt

Franz Smola

Until recently, Gustav Klimt’s painting “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser” was known only from a single photograph, which was moreover only black and white,¹ a fate that also befell a whole series of other works by Gustav Klimt that are now considered lost or that no longer exist. This is undoubtedly linked to the turbulent history of many of Klimt’s paintings and also to the often tragic fate of their former owners. In the years between 1938 and 1945, they were frequently subject to persecution, displacement and even murder in the concentration camps of the Nazi regime; their paintings were looted, auctioned or fell victim to the merciless machinery of war.

The colours in the portrait of Fräulein Lieser

The reappearance of a painting that was, for about a hundred years, thought to have been lost is sensational — not least because the chromatic power of the painting has come to light for the first time. Who could have guessed that the unprepossessing dark grey tones of the black and white reproduction could conceal such a glorious shade of orange merging into red in the background, the unusual blue-green, icy hue of the dress and a multitude of pastel colours in the flowery silk shawl! The bold, almost garish, reddish orange of the background is perhaps the biggest surprise.

Given the subject matter of the painting, i.e. the depiction of a rather demure-looking young lady, one might have expected a more delicate colour, such as light green or light blue. In fact, the colour orange is already familiar from other works by Klimt painted around the same time, such as the portrait of Johanna Staude (Fig. 19), which Klimt was still working on in the final weeks before his unexpected stroke.² In both the Staude and Lieser portraits, the orange background contrasts with blue in the clothing — in Staude’s case a heavily patterned top, and in Lieser’s case the long blue silk shawl draped over her shoulders, displaying a closely woven floral pattern on the back or front, as the case may be. Unlike the portrait of Lieser, however, the portrait of Johanna Staude is not a commissioned work, but rather belongs to that special genre of “fashion portraits”, which Klimt chose to paint relatively frequently, on his own initiative without a commission or fee. The focus here is not on creating a portrait as such, but rather on the artist’s delight in depicting elegant, fashion-conscious ladies, who do indeed always exhibit a special sense of style.

In the case of Johanna Staude, this can be seen in her striking blue patterned blouse, which was tailored from an artistic print fabric designed by the Wiener Werkstätte (the “Vienna Workshop”).³ Besides the spectacular reddish orange, the blue of the shawl is another very unusual colour in the Lieser portrait. No similar shade of blue can be found in either Klimt’s late paintings or in the works dating from his earlier periods. Only the background in the portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (Fig. 20), which Klimt worked on from 1914 to 1916, comes close to the blue in the Lieser picture.⁴

The question as to the degree of completeness

When looking at the Lieser portrait, a not unimportant question arises: to what extent did Klimt complete the picture? The head, face and hands of the sitter are, indisputably, completely finished and perfectly display Klimt’s artistic mastery. Yet the fact that this painting was not signed by Klimt shows that he himself did not yet consider the portrait finished. Klimt would presumably have further elaborated the background of the picture — one can only speculate as to how. After all, if you look more closely at the orange background of the Lieser painting, one can vaguely discern several shapes outlined in pencil (Fig. 8). These are probably decorative shapes with which Klimt perhaps wanted to enliven the background. Similar shapes outlined in pencil are also to be found under the palegreen, thin layers of paint in the background of the aforementioned portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl. In both cases, we can assume that Klimt intended to add a decorative design to the background at certain points. It is difficult to say what this would have looked like in concrete terms. The numerous preliminary studies in pencil that have survived for both the Zuckerkandl painting and the Lieser portrait unfortunately provide no information in this regard. This is because Klimt generally only finalised the background designs for his portraits at a very late stage, after the sitter had already largely taken shape. There are hardly any surviving preliminary studies for the design of the backgrounds, as Klimt probably mainly developed them directly on the canvas.⁸ It is possible that the Lieser portrait would have been finished using a sparingly applied scatter pattern.

The question is whether Klimt would have elaborated other parts of the picture in greater detail. Here, however, one should exercise great caution in making an assessment, as Klimt always displayed astonishing freedom in his painterly compositions, which hardly permits a final judgement as to what is or is not complete. The scattered pattern of flowers on the long silk shawl in the Lieser portrait (Fig. 25) should, for example, be regarded as completely finished, even if the application of colour may at first glance appear surprisingly dynamic, almost sketchy. However, Klimt always showed considerable creative diversity, particularly in his depiction of decorative elements. For example, one recalls the aforementioned portrait of Eugenia Primavesi (Fig. 26), in which Klimt applies similar, astoundingly free brushwork to render the patterned dress and the background, which is strongly emphasised by means of decorative elements. However, Klimt gave the painting to his clients in precisely this state, and it also bears his signature.⁹

It is certainly difficult to judge whether the depiction of Fräulein Lieser’s pale-green dress is finished or unfinished. Klimt has in fact treated this part very summarily. Perhaps he would later have defined the drapery more precisely and added a piece of jewellery or a border. But even here, caution is called for in making an assessment, as Klimt’s idiosyncratic painting style often intentionally leaves some parts cursorily and almost crudely rendered in order to contrast them all the more effectively with the more detailed areas.

Klimt’s fee for the Portrait of Fräulein Lieser

Fortunately, Klimt’s own notes provide a good record of his work on the painting and the payments he received for it. Klimt had invited Miss Lieser to a total of nine sittings, which took place at his studio in Hietzing in April and May 1917. In May and June 1917, he received a payment on account of 5,000 Kronen (Fig. 13).¹⁰ In comparison, Klimt had received two payments of 2,000 Kronen each for the portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl in November and December 1917.¹¹ The reason for the much lower fee for the Zuckerkandl painting is probably that large sections of the picture were still unfinished. Conversely, in view of the much higher fee for the Lieser painting, we can conclude that Klimt and the commissioning family probably considered it to be largely complete.

This sum of 10,000 Kronen as part payment was a very normal price for customers to have paid a few years earlier for a finished portrait by Klimt. Karl Wittgenstein, for example, had paid precisely that amount fo the portrait of his then 23-year-old daughter Margaret, completed in 1905.¹² However, due to the spiralling inflation caused by the war, prices increased in the following years.

For Klimt, a unique and legendary admirer and proponent of feminine beauty, probably no motif lay closer to his heart than such representational portrayals of pretty young ladies. Over the course of many creative years, it was in this very artistic field that he had achieved his greatest works. The portrait of Gertrud Loew (Fig. 28), which Klimt painted in 1902, can serve as an example from earlier years.¹⁵

In the sensual charm of the then 19-year-old Gertrud Loew, her likewise shy gaze and a posture that again expresses a certain demureness, Klimt presents us with the epitome of a sheltered young lady who was, incidentally, to marry shortly afterwards. In the portrait of Fräulein Lieser, too, Klimt adheres to this “young maiden” ideal, unperturbed by the political, social and economic developments that people in Vienna and Austria-Hungary were facing fifteen years later. As in all the paintings that Klimt created in his later years, the drama of real life is completely absent from the Lieser portrait, which is filled with beauty and harmony. Only the colours of the paintings and their intensity have changed over the years. Whereas Klimt’s 1902 painting of Gertrud Loew’s dress was a symphony in white much admired by her contemporaries, Klimt’s 1917 painting of Fräulein Lieser presents a polyphonic, melodious symphony of spring and summer colours.

1 Until now, the only reproduction was found in Novotny/Dobai 1967, no. 205, p. 367, where (p. 422) reference is made to the Picture Archive of the Austrian National Library.
2 Natter 2012, No. 240.
3 Franz Smola, “Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Johanna Staude (1917–1918): New Insights into the Subject and her Portrait´s Creation”, Belvedere Research Journal 1 (2023), https://doi.org/10.48636/brj.2023.1.101339.
4 Natter, 2012, No. 212.
5 Natter, 2012, No. 241.
6 Natter, 2012, No. 207.
7 Natter, 2012, No. 202.
8 “Letzte Schaffensjahre” (“The final creative years”), in: Gustav Klimt-Database / Klimt-Foundation, Vienna: https://www.klimt-database.com/de/klimtwerk/ 1914-1918/maler-der-frauen. Accessed on 14.05.2023.
9 It was possible to admire this picture at the Vienna exhibition “Klimt Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse”, Belvedere, Vienna, 3rd February – 29th May 2023.
10 See the article by Claudia Mörth-Gasser in this catalogue.
11 Strobl 1984, Vol. 3, p. 242.
12 Natter 2012, No. 169.
13 Martin Suppan, Hans Böhler: Leben und Werke (“Life and Works”), Vienna: Edition M. Suppan, 1990, p. 36, cited in: Janis Staggs, Kommentar zum Gemälde Gustav Klimt, “Friederike Maria Beer” (“Notes on the painting ‘Friederike Maria Beer’”), in: “Modern Art at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art”, Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, opening planned for autumn 2024. My sincere thanks to Janis Staggs of the Neue Galerie New York, for sending me an advance copy of the manuscript.
14 “Zitate und Bilder” (“Quotes and pictures”), bearbeitet von Franz Smola, in: Tobias G. Natter, Franz Smola, Peter Weinhäupl (ed.), Klimt persönlich. Bilder – Briefe – Einblicke (“Klimt’s personal life. Pictures – letters – insights”) (exhibition catalogue Leopold Museum, Vienna, 24th February – 27th August 2012), Vienna 2012, p. 285.
15 Natter 2012, No. 145.

Dr. Franz Smola is curator of the late 19th & early 20th century collection at the “Österreichische Galerie Belvedere” in Vienna.

Less is More

Rainer Metzger

“I can paint and draw,” Gustav Klimt once wrote in a note that has been preserved at the Vienna City Library. “I believe that, and some people say they believe it too. But I’m not sure whether it’s true. Only two things are certain: 1. There is no self-portrait of me. I am not interested in my own person as the ‘subject of a picture’, but rather in other people — above all, women — and even more so in other visual manifestations. I’m convinced that I’m not particularly interesting as a person… 2. I don’t feel comfortable expressing myself in spoken or written words, particularly when I’m expected to make statements about myself or my work… Anyone who wants to know something about me — as the artist, who alone is worthy of attention — should look carefully at my pictures and try to discern from them what I am and what I want.”¹

Klimt sees himself as being “not particularly interesting as a person”. He characteristically rejects any VIP status, and what he is saying here can be summed up as follows: the artist’s ego is less important than the self of the oeuvre. It is not the grand ego of a creative figure that asserts itself with heart and soul in his work; rather, that work has a life of its own. Perhaps it is a generational phenomenon: Klimt remains a proponent of the 19th century, with its ideals of autonomy and ist art cults. In the artificial world he creates, the motifs literally revolve around themselves — centred upon themselves. And the people he depicts are likewise preoccupied with themselves: with their eroticism; with their age; with their appearance and their outfits; with the sensations and sensibilities of their bodies. As Klimt so eloquently puts it, there isn’t much to say: it’s enough to show.

Klimt makes one of the most enchanting gestures in his oeuvre in the shape of the portrait that has just come to light, showing a young lady about whom we know only that her surname is Lieser. Reductiveness is not necessarily a quality of this master: quite the reverse — at times, his pictures overflow with sophistication and showy embellishment. An extravagant stylisation remains the hallmark of his work to this day, and the word “golden”, which describes both a material and an overall impression, sums it up very well. Klimt was in tune with the taste of a public that could be as little sure of its aesthetic standards as it was of its social status. It was all a little precarious, and the cocoons of costly finery in which he wrapped his luxurious creations as if it was natural to them place his sitters — who are “above all, women” — in the psychosocial milieu of the inner circle.

But then, an unforeseen openness moved into the ivory tower. Perhaps Klimt took the trip to Spain and France in autumn 1909 because he wanted to change his style or perhaps the trip, on which he was accompanied by his colleague and fellow Secessionist Carl Moll, helped to refresh his routine. “The squares are over,” the two wrote to Josef Hoffmann, the grand master and champion of the dominance of décor in Vienna, who had stayed at home. It was not just the square schematism of the Secession style that was over: it was also the end of the exuberant penchant for the Gesamtkunstwerk — i.e. the “total work of art”, a synthesis of the arts — that united them. Klimt said goodbye to everything that did not belong to the orthodoxy of painting and drawing. No gold, no sequins, no “standard-issue” pictures. A painting is paint on canvas, and this was now made plainly recognisable. His public, perhaps glad of this gentle call to order, followed suit. It appears that the amount of money and patience they were prepared to invest for a painting from his hand even increased.

1 Otto Breicha (ed.), Klimt – Die Goldene Pforte. Bilder und Schriften zu Leben und Werk (“Klimt – The Golden Gate. Pictures and writings relating to his life and work”), Salzburg 1978, p. 33.

Prof. Dr. Rainer Metzger is an art historian, curator and critic. He has taught at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe since 2004, and is the author of numerous publications on art history, including the book “Gustav Klimt. Drawings & Watercolours”, published by Brandstätter Verlag in 2005.

Gustav Klimt

1. 1862

   Gustav Klimt is born on 14th July in Baumgarten near Vienna, as the son of the engraver Ernst (1834–1892) and his wife Anna Klimt (1836–1915, née Finster).

2. 1876–1883

   Gustav Klimt and his brother Ernst (1864–1892) are admitted to the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts at the Imperial Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry, where they study until 1883. There, the brothers get to know Franz Matsch (1861–1942).

3. 1883–1891

   The Klimt brothers and Franz Matsch found the “Künstlercompagnie”, an artists’ association. The collective moves into its own studio and receives important commissions for interior design until 1892: it creates the décor for the theatres in Fiume (Rijeka), Karlovy Vary and Bucharest, as well as the ceiling design for the Hermes Villa in Lainz. This is followed by commissions for the frescoes in the stairwells of the newly built Burgtheater and in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Museum of Fine Arts) in Vienna.

4. 1892

   Death of his father and brother Ernst Klimt in July. Klimt assumes the guardianship of his niece Helene. The Künstlercompagnie is disbanded.

5. 1894

   Commission for the faculty paintings for the main auditorium of the University of Vienna. Klimt designs the pictures for “Philosophy”, “Medicine”, “Jurisprudence” and the spandrel pictures, Matsch designs the pictures for “Theology”. After years of controversy, Klimt will reject the commission in 1905.

6. 1897

   Klimt and a number of other artists leave the Künstlerhaus. Klimt is a founding member of the Vienna Secession and becomes its first president.

7. 1898

   The portrait “Sonja Knips” marks the beginning of Klimt’s rise to become a sought-after portrait painter of high Viennese society. He paints his first landscapes during his summer holiday with the Flöge family in the Salzkammergut region.

8. 1902

   Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze is presented to mark the 14th exhibition of the Vienna Secession. Klimt paints a portrait of the nineteen-year-old Gertrud Loew.

9. 1903

   Klimt goes on trips to Italy, Ravenna and Rome, where he finds artistic inspiration for the “Golden Period”. Big Klimt collective exhibition at the Secession with over 80 works. Founding of the Wiener Werkstätte (“Vienna Workshop”).

10. 1904

    Josef Hoffmann is commissioned by the Belgian industrialist Adolphe Stoclet to build a palace in Brussels. Klimt designs the marble frieze in the dining room.

11. 1905

    The Klimt Group, including Carl Moll and Josef Hoffmann, leaves the Secession.

12. 1907

    Klimt paints the portrait “Adele Bloch-Bauer I”.

13. 1908–1910

    The Klimt Group holds the “Kunstschau” exhibition on the site of today’s Konzerthaus in Vienna. There, Klimt displays his painting “The Kiss”, which is acquired by the Ministry of Education for the Moderne Galerie in the Belvedere. The trip to Paris in 1909 provides important artistic inspiration and heralds the end of the “Golden Period”. In 1910, Klimt takes part in the 9th Venice Biennale.

14. 1911

    Klimt moves into his last studio, at Feldmühlgasse 11 in Vienna’s 13th district. His painting “Death and Life” is awarded the first prize at the International Art Exhibition in Rome.

15. 1912–1916

    Colourful portraits of women are executed, including “Adele Bloch- Bauer II”, “Mäda Primavesi”, “Eugenia (Mäda) Primavesi”, “Elisabeth Lederer” and “Friederike Maria Beer”. Klimt has exhibitions in Budapest, Munich, Mannheim, Prague and Rome. In the summer of 1916, he traveled to Lake Attersee for the last time with Emilie Flöge.

16. 1917

    Klimt works on multiple paintings at the same time, none of which he completes: “Die Braut”, “Adam und Eva”, the “Dame mit Fächer”, “Der Iltispelz”, the portraits “Amalie Zuckerkandl”, “Johanna Staude”, “Ria Munk III”, “Damenbildnis in Weiß”, “Damenbildnis en face” and the “Bildnis Fräulein Lieser”.

17. 1918

    Klimt dies on 6th February due to a stroke. He leaves the unfinished paintings unsigned in his studio.

Sources of figures