Gustav Klimt Seated woman, huddled together, covered in a dark shawl, 1908–09 Study for Family (1909–10) Cat. no. 7.32
contour lines. In one sheet, he assembles
The museum owns various groups of studies
three freely varied women’s heads for the
related to these painting projects. In the drawings
Hostile Forces, thereby forming an autonomous
of nude women executed for Hope I (1903) and
composition; the focus is the demonically glaring, central figure of the three Gorgons, with her wild
Hope II (1907–08), Klimt visualizes the mystery of germinating life.9 In the studies for The Three Ages
hair and cramped fingers (cat. no. 5.24).
of Woman (1905), he focuses on both the physical
Jurisprudence, the third university painting (1903),
as well as the psychic aspects of the life cycle, in
was marked decisively by the monumentality
particular extreme old age. The bent-over woman
and linearism of the Beethoven Frieze. A brittle
figure in the earliest studies for Death and Life
linearity characterizes the studies for the jurists,
(1910–11, reworked in 1916), dating from 1908–09,
prominent among them the imposing half-length
and in the rare watercolor sheet for Family
portrait of a figure with harsh, sculptural facial
(1909–10), give expression to sorrow and
features (cat. no. 6.57). Klimt captures the bent-
melancholy (cat. no. 7.32). A special focus of the
over, haggard figure of the old man—the model
collection is on the studies executed for Water
for the Sinner—with fine, angular lines of black
Snakes I and II (both 1904–07), in which Klimt
crayon; the contours of the studies for the nude
thematizes lesbian love and autoeroticism for the
figure of Veritas, by contrast, display the curving,
first time, rendering them far more revealingly
sensuous quality of the drawings for the Gorgons
than in the paintings; produced in this context
in the Beethoven Frieze.
as well were a number of autonomous sheets. In
Despite various shifts in his style, Klimt would
the group of studies showing walking and reading
always remain essentially faithful to the
models as well as dancers, begun in 1906–07,
innovative drawing practice he developed in
from which the figure Expectation in the Stoclet
the framework of Philosophy and Medicine. As
Frieze would ultimately emerge (1910–11), Klimt
a draftsman, he would devote himself almost
takes up motifs from the Beethoven Frieze. The
exclusively to the individual (and primarily
theme of love between man and woman, a central
female) human figure, whether in the context of
theme for Klimt, was developed in a series of
themes related to life in general, including erotic
studies featuring the highly charged linear idiom
ones, or in the numerous studies for portraits
that was used by the artist at roughly the same
which are present in the collection. In the Golden
time in his preparations for the painting The Kiss
Style allegories produced after Jurisprudence
(1908), the most celebrated work of the Golden
and beyond, Klimt went back to the individual life
Style, and the couple Fulfillment in the Stoclet
themes of the first two university paintings and
Frieze. Beginning with the Beethoven Frieze,
set these in a monumental decorative context.
Klimt began anchoring his figures more securely
9 In an unused study of an old man, dated 1904–05, intended for the orants in Hope II (Strobl no. 1762), Klimt was apparently inspired by George Minne’s sculpture John the Baptist (blue stone, 71 cm, Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent); see Bisanz-Prakken, “Gustav Klimt’s Drawings,” 2001, pp. 158–59.
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