Gustav Klimt

AN Hodge

• Publisher: Arcturus
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781839403323
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Biographies

Gustav Klimt's exotic, sensuous paintings recall the art of ancient civilizations - their patterns and ornamentation reminiscent of Byzantine mosaics and Egyptian murals. But from what context did these masterworks spring? This beautifully illustrated book is a guide to the life and work of Gustav Klimt. Klimt is one of the most influential artists of the Art Nouveau movement, first achieving fame as a decorative painter before turning to portraiture and erotic art. The decorative style persisted in his work, leading to abstract compositions with flattened, glowing surfaces embellished with gold and silver leaf. This technique is perhaps best identified in Klimt's two portraits of Adele Bloch BauerThe book serves as a perfect introduction to Klimt's work, showcasing a selection of his paintings as well as providing fascinating biographical detail. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Great Artists series by Arcturus Publishing introduces some of the most significant artists of the past 150 years, looking at their lives, techniques and inspirations, as well as presenting a selection of their best work.

Founded in 1863, the Kunstgewerbeschule (the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts) was set up to provide an advanced education for artists and designers. The building now houses the University of Applied Arts.

Chapter 1

The Artist as a Young Man

Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, a rural suburb of Vienna, on 14 July 1862. Although his family was by no means wealthy, they were artistic. His father, Ernst Klimt (1834–92), was a gold engraver by trade. Originally from a peasant family in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), Ernst emigrated to Austria in search of work. Here he met and married a local Viennese girl Anna Finster (1836–1915) and the couple went on to have seven children – three boys and four girls. Anna originally had high hopes of becoming an opera singer, an ambition that stalled once she became a mother.

Despite working with rich metals, Ernst struggled to provide for his growing family, particularly after the Panic of 1873, a depression that began when the Vienna Stock Exchange crashed. Further tragedy hit the family a year later: when Klimt was 12, his five-year-old sister Anna died and not long afterwards his sister Klara had a mental breakdown. An hereditary predisposition towards mental illness was something that troubled Klimt throughout his life. For the time being, however, his family’s ongoing financial struggle meant that he needed to focus his mind on turning his precocious talent for drawing to good use. He was encouraged to leave school at 14 to enter the Kunstgewerbeschule (the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts), the idea being that he might be able to contribute to the family finances by becoming an art teacher. Klimt was not the only one in the family to demonstrate an early artistic talent. His younger brothers Ernst and Georg Klimt also produced work that showed exceptional skills in art and design, and both would join their elder brother at the School of Arts and Crafts over the next couple of years.

Klimt studied at the Kunstsgewerbeschule for seven years – from 1876 to 1883. Opened in 1864, it was a new institution modelled on London’s Metropolitan School of Design, based in South Kensington (which would later become the Royal College of Art). The Principal, Professor Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg, was a reformer who looked to the English Arts and Crafts movement for inspiration. He saw all art forms as being of equal importance and believed that there should be no distinction between art and crafts – arguing that all the art forms should be brought together under the umbrella term Gesamtkunstwerk, or total artwork.

Rudolf Eitelberger von Edelberg (1817–85) who founded the Kunstgewerbeschule.

The Education of the Children of Clovis, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1861. Klimt admired the Dutch painter for his draftsmanship and depictions of classical antiquity. In this work, Queen Clotilde, the wife of King Clovis, is shown training her three young children to hurl an axe to avenge the death of her father.

The education that Gustav received was traditional and thorough: he learnt the techniques of metalwork, mosaic and fresco and was exposed to work from different eras and cultures, including Greek and Egyptian art. Pupils at the School were encouraged to copy the work of other artists, to study perspective and refer to the classical model when constructing their drawings. Klimt was exceptionally talented at drawing and took this and decorative painting as his specialized subjects. Recognized as an exceptionally gifted student, Klimt was singled out to study under the prestigious painter Ferdinand Julius Laufberger (1829–81). The predominate influences on Klimt in these early years were Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912), the Dutch painter who settled in England and specialized in paintings of classical antiquity and Hans Makart (1840–84), a Viennese contemporary whose huge canvases evoking colourful, decorative historical scenes were much admired by Klimt. At this early stage there was very little to suggest that this model student would radically break free from the traditional, almost entirely academic approach for which he was so skilled – much less that he would be the initiator of a whole new artistic movement.

Das Blinde Kuh Spiel, Ferdinand Laufberger, 1865. Laufberger was appointed professor of figurative drawing and painting at the newly established Kunstgewerbeschule in 1868. In Laufberger’s depiction of the children’s game, the blind cow stumbles around trying to catch hold of its tormentors.

In 1877 Gustav’s brother, Ernst and their friend Franz von Matsch (1861–1942) also enrolled in the school. The two brothers and their friend shared a studio and began working together, and by 1880 they had started to receive commissions. A strong economy and Vienna’s massive building boom, particularly on the Ringstrasse – the new boulevard constructed around the city – helped the three young artists and their fledgling business known as the Painters’ Company (Künstler Compagnie) get plenty of paid work.

Ferdinand Laufberger’s students photographed in 1880. The professor sits to the left of Gustav and Ernst Klimt in the front row, with fellow company member Franz Matsch to the right at the back.

In 1879 the three young artists – along with Klimt’s younger brother Georg, who had also by now joined the School of Arts – were recommended by Prof Laufberger to work on decorations for Festzug, the pageant to celebrate the silver wedding celebrations of Emperor Franz Joseph to Elisabeth of Bavaria. Hans Makart, the painter most admired by Klimt and who was by now a leading celebrity in Viennese high society, was directing the work on the pageant. Known as the painter prince of Vienna, Makart had forged his own allegorical style based on classical antiquity, combining this with ornamental decoration and the swaggering manner of what came to be known as Late Baroque. Gustav greatly looked up to the older artist. Makart’s work, whether as a painter or interior decorator, chiefly celebrated occasions and events in Viennese history. He worked on huge canvases that he treated rather like a stage set, filling them with lots of little people busily engaged in action. A confident and socially adept character, Makart used his studio as a salon, often re-enacting historical moments in costume, while going all out to impress members of Viennese high society.

Apart from admiring and assimilating aspects of Makart’s glamorous allegorical style, Klimt particularly revered his use of rich, vibrant colour. Known as ‘the magician of colours’, Makart used to mix asphalt into his colours to make them more intense – combining this with a skilful use of light and shade to heighten the dramatic impact of his scenes. Klimt was completely overawed by Makart’s talent – one story has it that he even bribed a servant to be allowed to sleep on the floor of his idol’s studio in the hope that he might absorb some of his greatness.

Entwurf zum Festzug, Hans Makart, 1879. Klimt’s idol, Hans Makart, organized a festive procession to honour the 25th wedding anniversary of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth of Austria. This scroll-like painting is a record of the event that took place in Vienna in front of the imperial couple.

After their work on the pageant, the three painters were employed in their own right in 1880 to create four decorative ceiling paintings for the Palais Sturany in Vienna – the magnificent residence of a Viennese architect. The two Klimt brothers and Matsch were still working in the Makart style – adapting his particular brand of classical antiquity – but for this commission they also took much inspiration from woodcuts created by the great German fifteenth-century draughtsman Albrecht Dürer. Klimt studied these woodcuts assiduously and drew upon his own facility as an engraver (and what he had learned growing up with a master engraver as a father) to depict animals in his designs with extraordinary faithfulness. The next two years saw further work for the company in and out of Vienna, including commissions in Croatia and Bohemia (now the Czech Republic).

By the time the three artists left the School in 1883, the company was starting to flourish and they accepted further commissions to decorate villas and theatres outside Vienna, this time in Bucharest and Carlsbad. In 1884, Hans Makart died an early death at the age of 44. This must have been a difficult time for Klimt – a huge admirer of Makart’s work, he had been literally following in his footsteps for several years. Nonetheless, it is a sign of how established Klimt and his fellow company members were by this time that the commissions continued to come in, and a year later they were working on new designs for the Emperor himself. Based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the scheme was for the Villa Hermes (known in German as the Hermesvilla), a country residence near Vienna, built by the Emperor Franz Joseph for his wife Sisi. Klimt’s designs were well researched and well executed, but the Empress – who was 16 when she married Franz Joseph – became very timid over the years and refused to spend even a night there.

Schottenring 21, Detail in the Beletage, Gustav Klimt and Franz von Matsch, 1888. In 1880 Klimt and Matsch took on a commission to develop work for the Palais Sturany.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius), Gustav Klimt, Franz von Matsch and Ernst Klimt, 1884–5. From the Villa Hermes.

Vienna and the Belle Époque

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Austria was a country of contradictions and compromise. In 1867, after various military defeats and negotiations with Hungary, Emperor Franz Joseph was the figurehead of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Emperor ruled his dual monarchy from the magnificent Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. In spite of a backdrop of military and political manoeuvring, this date marked the beginning of an unparalleled era of wealth and ostentation in Vienna known as the Belle Époque. With two million inhabitants between 1867 and World War I, Vienna stood alongside Paris as the impressive and resplendent capital of Europe.

Emperor Franz Joseph made some sweeping changes to the city’s geography, including knocking down the city walls in 1857 to make way for the Ringstrasse, a horseshoe-shaped perimeter road. Many public buildings were erected, including a new parliament, museums, the Opera and the Court Theatre. Otto Wagner, an architect known for his modernist sympathies, designed the Stadtbahn, an urban rail network in 1890. Alongside the civic buildings, new private residences sprung up with ornate façades and lavishly decorated interiors. Drinking water was improved, and electric lamps and trams were introduced. This was a new world on the move – with a need to show that it was on the move.

In this febrile and pleasure-loving atmosphere, the dominant haute bourgeoisie flourished – hosting magnificent banquets and packing the theatres and opera houses. The poor, by contrast, remained poor and in inadequate housing.

The most significant impact of the Belle Époque was on the cultural life of the city. Amid all the opulence and decadence, the contrasts between old and new, traditional and modern became ever wider, driving the artists and intellectuals who were ensuring that Vienna was right at the heart of Europe’s creative map. There was an astonishing array of musical talent centred around Vienna. Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Brahms had all lived and composed in the city. Now, Richard and Johann Strauss’s waltzes and operettas were adopted with élan by the bourgeoisie for their lavish balls. Gustav Mahler lived in Vienna for 10 years, his work acting as a bridge between the nineteenth-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early twentieth century. Initially, art and sculpture remained pretty...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Artist as a Young Man
• Chapter 2 The Secession Years
• Chapter 3 Femmes Fatales
• Chapter 4 Landscapes
• Chapter 5 The Later Works
• Timeline
• Further Information
• List of Illustrations
• Copyright