When the name Gustav Klimt is mentioned, it often conjures up visions of his iconic portrait, "Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907), with its mesmerising interplay of silver and gold. However, beneath the shimmering allure of his renowned portraits lies an intriguing facet of Klimt's artistic repertoire: his lesser-known yet captivating landscapes. These hidden gems showcase a different side of the artist, revealing his mastery in evoking a sense of awe and wonder through nature's beauty. Stepping away from the opulence of gilded figures, Klimt's landscapes allow us to witness the pure unadulterated genius at play as he creates breathtaking scenes with his unmistakable use of shapes, colours and composition. In this article, we delve into the enigmatic world of Gustav Klimt's landscape paintings, where his artistry ventures beyond the portraits that made him famous, inviting us to explore the depths of his visionary talent.
Gustav Klimt, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, 1907, oil, silver and gold on canvas, Neue Galerie, New York.
Work as a Landscape artist:
Less well-known is Klimt's work as a landscape painter.
In 1879, nearly 30 years before painting Adele, Klimt was already a successful draftsman and painter. He started the Künstlerkompagnie (Artist Company) with his brother Ernst and friend Franz Matsch.
From 1879 -1897 Klimt worked mainly as a decorative artist, but in 1897 he left the highly conservative Künstlerhausgenossenschaft (Cooperative Society of Austrian Artists) and started the Vienna Secessionist movement.
At this time, Klimt began spending his summers at the Attersee lake in Austria.
I did no work during the first days of my stay here. I did what I intended to do, lazed, looked through a few books, studied Japanese art, and went about with my 'finder' [Sücher], a piece of cardboard with a hole cut into it, looking for landscapes to paint.
Gustav Klimt in a Letter to Marie Zimmerman
Klimt's time at Lake Attersee was marked as a period of peace and tranquillity, a period of quiet contemplation in which he created most of his landscape paintings. He painted his landscapes for himself, but after he left the Künstlerhausgenossenschaft, they also provided him with a significant revenue stream.
Klimt's inspiration:
His landscapes were not commissioned works, and he dealt with purely artistic questions. This was in keeping with his new direction as the founder of the Vienna Secessionist movement. The movement members promoted freedom of artistic expression untouched by the marketplace. One can see how these ideas began to influence Klimt's artwork. He was also a great admirer of the symbolist artist Vincent Van Gogh and art forms such as pointillism and abstraction.
Symbolism, which began as a literary concept was soon embraced by artists who rejected the conventions of Naturalism. Symbolist painters believed that art should reflect an emotion or idea. Herman Bahr, the long-term friend and supporter of Klimt, was also a well-known writer and champion of naturalism, romanticism and symbolism.
Bahr regarded Klimt as an 'idealist, whose inner wealth is so great that he could accurately portray the phenomena of nature without surrendering his personality in the process'.
For Bahr, Klimt possessed the rare ability to divest himself of his moods and be objective in his painting of nature. Instead of placing his moods onto his image of a rosebush, such as a sentimental would, Klimt saw the rosebush as something very definite and would not bother the external appearances of the rosebush with his inner moods. Instead, when he painted a rosebush, he would give it what belonged to it. According to Bahr, Klimt could not think without feeling. "We normally think in words; if we are particularly attentive, we believe we can hear voices from within. It is, however, Klimt's nature that he thinks visions in faces."
Gustav Klimt, Pear Tree. 1903, oil and gold leaf on canvas, 101 x101cm. Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museum, Cambridge.
Evolution of the artist:
In the painting Pear tree, Klimt uses an exaggeration of colour, which represents the inner feeling of the Pear tree. The painting is a hybrid of Impressionist and Pointillist techniques. During the summer of 1903, when Pear Tree was painted, Klimt is recorded as writing a letter to Marie Zimmerman: "I did no work during the first days of my stay here. I did what I intended to do, lazed, looked through a few books, studied Japanese art, and went about with my 'finder' [Sücher], a piece of cardboard with a hole cut into it, looking for landscapes to paint."
The use of the 'finder' explains the strict containment of space in the painting. In the Pear Tree, the viewer sees how the tree trunks seem to lean towards one another. The painting appears crowded and has a mosaic-like quality, almost symbolic of people at a dance. Klimt uses pointillism to enliven his painting but keeps pursuing his organisational composition. Klimt turned the achievements of the pointillists toward the decorative and wove his painting mosaic like a densely knotted carpet over the objects.
Gustav Klimt, Sonneblume, 1907-08, oil on canvas,
Gustav Klimt, The Kiss, 1907-08, oil on canvas.
It's hard not to compare Klimt's painting Sonneblume, with another famous Klimt painting - The Kiss. The two paintings draw striking similarities in their composition. Klimt uses symbolist painting techniques to demonstrate the fertility of nature. Klimt saw the plentitude of nature and its fertility, which stimulated his senses. His impenetrable landscape facades sifted and solidified the phenomenon of fertility. In his figure and landscape paintings, Klimt seized upon the biological principle in nature. He studded environments, as he had his portraits, with overlapping symbols of fertility and growth.
In 1906 a major Van Gogh retrospective was held in Vienna. This had a significant effect on Klimt. Van Gogh's influence on Klimt's depiction of the sunflower can be seen in the large colourful flowers and the view from above and afar - not to mention that his subject choice was Van Gogh's signature sunflower.
Gustav Klimt, The Park, 1909 - 10, oil on canvas,
Abstraction:
Over time, Klimt's paintings became increasingly abstract. His contemporaries noticed and attributed the abstraction of Klimt's art to his collaboration with the architect Josef Hoffman. In The Park, one can see how Klimt has begun to balance horizontal and vertical as well as compartmentalise the various elements of his paintings into near/far and small/large contrasts. This treatment of his subject matter anticipated Piet Mondrian's use of the orthogonal line in his abstract paintings and his arrangement of colour into discreet rectilinear areas of the canvas.
Gustav Klimt, Avenue in Schloss Kammer Park, 1912, oil on canvas.
Klimt painted five paintings in Schloss Kammer from various angles. These paintings show how Klimt's pointillism style evolved into his mosaic-like form. In Schloss Kammer Park, Klimt places the building away from the viewer; he paints the building with great accuracy. In the foreground, one can see the trees lining the avenue to the building. The bold dots of colour and especially the trunks and branches of the trees, with their exaggerated contours, underline Klimt's treatment of Van Gogh's painterly style, which had occupied Klimt since 1903.
Klimt is sadly one of the few artists whose art I have yet to have the pleasure of seeing in person. His artwork is immediately recognisable, a testament to his unique style. His early successes placed him in a position of prominence that he seemed uncomfortable with. In his later years, he sought solitude to continue his painting without distraction. For me, his landscapes represent the style of art that he was most happy to create. Let me know in the comment sections what your thoughts are.
If you are interested in reading further, here is a list of some of my resources:
Alessandra Comini, 1975, "Gustav Klimt"
Donald Daviau, 1980, "Hermann Bahr and Gustav Klimt: A Chapter in the Breakthrough of Modernity in Turn-of-the-Century Vienna."
Gustav Klimt: Modernism in the Making. Edited by Colin B. Bailey. 2001.
Jean Lahor, 2012, "Art Nouveau"
Lucia Curta, 2004, "Painter and King: Gustav Klimt's Early Decorative Work at Peles Castle, Romania, 1883-1884."
Nicole Meyers, 2007, "Symbolism"
🌺