Gustav Klimt. Patrick Bade

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      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 maternal feel. The woman’s breasts are full and large-nippled, her head bowed in a peaceful, almost Madonna-like pose. She is enclosed by a fabric that follows an abruptly straight line down her back as if she were actually sitting on a straight-backed chair being carried by the figures underneath her. The last great hope of humankind, transported on the backs of other women.

      When Klimt died, there were no fewer than fourteen claims that he was the father of an illegitimate child, only three of which were legally upheld – two by Marie Zimmerman and one by Maria Ucicky. (The child was named Gustav after his father and later went on to become a film director). It is generally assumed that he slept with most of his models.

      He was certainly known to be very generous towards them. Who knows whether the pregnancies depicted in his paintings had any connection with the painter himself? If they did, Herma’s gaze in Hope I takes on an entirely new meaning: a look of reproach? Or one of irony?

      Drawings and Sketches

      In his studio, Klimt kept girls available to him at all times, waiting for him in a room next door in case he decided to paint them. Franz Servaes, a contemporary art critic, observed: “Here he was surrounded by mysterious, naked female creatures, who, while he stood silent in front of his easel, strolled around his studio, stretching themselves, lazing around and enjoying the day – always ready for the command of the master obediently to stand still whenever he caught sight of a pose or a movement that appealed to his sense of beauty and that he would then capture in a rapid drawing.”

      Klimt made sketches for virtually everything he did. Sometimes there were over a hundred drawings for one painting, each showing a different detail – a piece of clothing or jewellery, or a simple gesture. They would lie about his studio in heaps, where his adored cats, it is said, had a habit of destroying them.

      Young Girl with a Blue Veil, 1902–1903.

      Oil on canvas, 67 × 55 cm.

      Private collection.

      Orchard, 1905–1906.

      Oil on canvas, 98.7 × 99.4 cm.

      The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.

      Garden Landscape, 1906.

      Oil on canvas, 110 × 110 cm.

      Private collection.

      Tree of Life, c.1905–1909.

      195 × 102 cm.

      Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna.

      Unfortunately, however, the bulk of his sketchbooks were destroyed not by cats but by a fire in Emilie Flöge’s apartment. Only three of the books survived. The drawings which have survived, however, provide a fascinating insight into Klimt’s artistic and personal preoccupations: whereas in his paintings nudity and sexuality are covered, almost imprisoned by ornament and textile to be partially and tantalisingly revealed, in his drawings eroticism is open and undisguised.

      Even during his lifetime, his drawings were regarded by some critics as the best work of his entire life’s work, but they would not have been widely seen. Luckily for him, unlike Schiele, who earned his living from his drawings, Klimt’s income was derived entirely from his painting. Drawing for him was either a necessary preparatory process or a form of relaxation, a way of expressing himself spontaneously free from the constraints and detail of oil.

      Klimt’s drawings not only reveal his mastery of illustrating, they also show an erotic obsession and a sexual freedom quite at odds with the covered-up, repressed society in which he moved. In these drawings there is no visual, temporal, or spatial context, just the women themselves, who were presumably, as earlier described, wandering around his studio in a state of undress. He draws them only in outline, omitting any internal modeling or shading of their bodies and almost always drawing attention to their genitalia or breasts by using perspective, foreshortening, distortion or other formal techniques.

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