Klimt‘s landscapes
1898-1917
After being already pretty well known for his allegories and female portraits, Gustav Klimt turned relatively late to landscape paintings. The first works of this genre were produced in 1898 [1], when he already was president of the shortly before founded Vienna Secession. It may quite well have been that turmoil concerning cultural policy in general as well as public upset with his draft versions for the university’s faculty paintings prompted him to turn increasingly towards calmer topics.
Among the around 250 today known paintings by Gustav Klimt there are about 50 landscapes that were created mainly during his “summer retreats“ in the region around the Attersee, where he spent almost every summer between 1900 and 1916.
From 1899 on, Klimt’s landscape paintings are exclusively rectangular. He especially depicts ponds and quagmires [2-3], cottage gardens in bloom [7] as well as deep views into woods [5]. By choosing his motifs Klimt stands in the tradition of Austrian mood realists but by his uncommon and reckless image sections he proofs to be a very modern painter. So for instance in the painting “The large Poplar” [6], he radically cuts the upper part of the eponymous tree. In the painting “Attersee“ [4], that a contemporary art critic called “a frame full of lake water“ he reduces the depth effect of the depiction by an extremely highly set horizon to a minimum.
n his works, Klimt handles the accomplishments of diverse art trends: The water surface of the painting “The Quagmire“ [3] is reminiscent of impressionism, the mosaic-like mesh of deshes of colour in “The large Poplar” [6] however reveals a very personal involvement with pointillism. And Vincent van Gogh’s work fascinated Klimt again since his journeys to France and the exhibitions of 1903, 1906, and 1909, where the vividly coloured works full of spirit were presented in Vienna for the first time. One can discern an individual interpretation of van Gogh‘s art for instance in “Alley in the Park of Kammer Palace“ [8].
In his late landscape paintings, Gustav Klimt deals with the art trends Fauvism and Cubism. While his early works sometimes were strongly stylized, his late landscape compositions renouncing a flat and classic image centre are contingent of pastose and vivacious colours, like one can clearly see in his painting “Forester’s Lodge“ [9] or Klimt’s last landscape painting, a view of Unterach on the Attersee [10].
