Woman Standing – Portrait

Description

Gustav Klimt
Woman Standing – Portrait
(Study for Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I)
1903
Graphite on paper
Gift of the Ernst Pulgram and Frances McSparran Collection, 2007/2.97
Klimt received the commission for his first of two portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer in 1900, although the painting was not finished until 1907. Klimt created approximately one-hundred sketches for this portrait, and the finished product is considered the masterpiece of his “golden period.” This work appears to be an early study; Klimt’s focus is the sitter’s pose and attitude, rather than her drapery and clothing, which dominate the later sketches. Bloch-Bauer’s clothing eventually became a mosaic-like combination of gold and silver that blends in with the decorative background, an effect influenced by the artist’s recent visit to the Byzantine mosaics in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna. Bloch-Bauer was the wife of a Viennese industrialist and an enthusiast of contemporary art who maintained a salon frequented by the intellectual, political, and artistic elite of fin-de siècle Vienna.