Although the faculty paintings ensured that Klimt swiftly lost the patronage of the Emperor and other establishment figures, he was fortunate enough to be able to earn an extremely comfortable living from painting portraits and thus did not have to worry about this loss. Three times, however, he was refused a professorship of the Academy. Only in 1917 was he offered the small consolation of being made an honorary member.
Fin de Siècle Vienna
It must be remembered that despite their tastes for balls, the opera, theatre and music, the Viennese upper classes were extremely conservative in their tastes. A combination of strict Roman Catholicism and rigid social morals kept them buttoned up, at least on the surface. And whilst people were only too happy to indulge in all sorts of sensual pleasures that were sanctioned by society – the waltz, for example – they did not appreciate having openly erotic, ugly or sexual subjects thrust before them, a double standard which speaks volumes about fin de siècle morality.
The Vienna into which Klimt was born was a city perched uncomfortably on the cusp of two eras. Then, it was still the capital of a far-reaching empire of over fifty million inhabitants, ruled by the Emperor Franz Joseph.
However, by the time of Klimt’s death in 1918, the Habsburg Empire itself had only seven months left to live. Austria then became a tiny nation state of seven million inhabitants, three million of whom were concentrated around Vienna. Twenty years later it was absorbed by Nazi Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, himself, ironically, born on Austrian soil.
The period of decline had begun even before Klimt was born. Military defeats across the Empire sounded warning bells for future stability, whilst Vienna was filling up with Czechs, gypsies, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, and Romanians – immigrants from the poorest parts of the Empire, all in search of work, often living in appalling conditions. The wealthy Viennese, however, chose not to acknowledge these signals of future trouble but rather to ignore the outside world and immerse themselves in a whirl of pleasurable activities.
This was a period of great musicians – Brahms, Bruckner, Strauss the younger, Schönberg, Mahler and, of course, Franz Lehár, creator of the light operettas so beloved of the Viennese. It was also the era of Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Arthur Schnitzler, and amidst all this, Klimt.
Lovers and Friends
One of the most tantalising facts about a man so well-known in times comparatively recent to our own is that almost nothing concrete is known about Klimt’s personal life, a fact largely due to his own reticence on the subject. Whilst the facts of his artistic career are well-charted, knowledge of his private life depends entirely on hearsay.
Jurisprudence, 1907.
Oil on canvas, 430 × 300 cm.
Burnt in 1945 at Immendorf Castle.
Music, 1901.
Lithograph.
Marie Moll, 1902–1903.
Pencil, 45.2 × 31.4 cm.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Fairy Tale, 1884.
Black pencil and ink wash, 63.9 × 34.3 cm.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Final Drawing for the Allegory of Sculpture, 1902–1903.
Black pencil, graphite pencil lead, wash and gold, 41.8 × 32.3 cm.
Historisches Museum, Vienna.
Flowing Water, 1898.
Oil on canvas, 52 × 65 cm.
Private collection.
Death’s Procession, 1903.
Burnt in 1945 at Immendorf Castle.
On the one hand, he is depicted as a ladies’ man, built like a peasant, strong as an ox, sleeping with countless women, including all of his models. On the other hand, he is seen as a hypochondriac and a confirmed bachelor with a balanced lifestyle, living with his mother and sisters while keeping a studio in the suburbs to which he went to work regularly every day:
Klimt’s daily routines were very bourgeois. He was so engrossed in them that any divergence from his normal course was a horror to him; going anywhere was a major event, and a big trip was only conceivable if his friends did all the shopping for him beforehand, down to the smallest detail.
Klimt never married, but had a long relationship with Emilie Flöge, the sister of his brother Ernst’s wife. In 1891, Ernst had married Helene Flöge, one of two sisters who ran a fashion house in Vienna. The marriage only lasted fifteen months, but through Helene, Gustav met Emilie. From around 1897 onwards, he spent almost every summer on the Attersee with the Flöge family, periods of peace and tranquillity, which produced the landscape paintings constituting almost a quarter of his entire œuvre.
The exact nature of Klimt’s relationship with Emilie Flöge remains unknown. They never lived together, and although it was Emilie whom Klimt requested on his death bed, there has always been a great deal of speculation as to whether they were actually lovers.
Roses in Trees, 1904.
Oil on canvas, 110 × 110 cm.
Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Pear Tree, 1903.
Oil and casein on canvas, 101 × 101 cm.
Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Klimt corresponded extensively both with Emilie and with Marie (Mizzi) Zimmerman, who was the mother of two of his three illegitimate children. He writes to Marie with great affection and in detail about his work and daily life, whilst to Emilie he appears to write merely in order to communicate information concerning travel arrangements and other such neutral details.
But who is to tell where the truth ultimately lies? It is perfectly possible that more personal correspondence between Klimt and Emilie did exist, but was subsequently destroyed.
His 1902 portrait of Emilie shows an attractive young woman wearing one of her own dresses, many of which Klimt designed for her fashion house, as well as jewellery and textiles. It’s a remarkably subdued painting, with just a subtle, tantalising hint of sensuality in the light patch of skin just above the bodice, suggesting the hidden breast beneath. How different from the 1903 painting Hope I, which depicts a naked and heavily pregnant woman, Herma, one of Klimt’s favourite models.
The story goes that one day Herma, whom Klimt apparently described as having a backside more beautiful and more intelligent than the faces of many other models, failed to turn up for work. Klimt, who took very good care of his models, began to worry and finally sent someone to find out if she was ill. Upon hearing that she was not ill but pregnant, Klimt insisted that she came to work anyway. She then became the model for Hope I.
This fragile, slender woman looking calmly out at the viewer is anything but maternal. Her figure, apart from her distended stomach, is still that of a young woman, thin to the point of skinniness. Her hair is crowned with flowers as if she were a bride. Depending on one’s point of view, her direct gaze and unashamed nakedness shown in profile for maximum effect, are either pointing out the obvious consequences of sex, or inviting a still-sexual response to her body.
The later Hope II, painted in 1907–1908, has a far more