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Girl with a fan
Gustav Klimt • Painting, 1917, 100×100 cm
Description of the artwork «Girl with a fan»
"Lady with a Fan" - one of the last portraits of women by Gustav Klimt. He worked on the painting in 1917 - shortly before his death, which was due to pneumonia after suffering a stroke. However, before the artist managed to finish the work - with the exception of a few minor details.
If most of Klimt's portraits depict secular ladies, then here he painted a model, whose identity still remains a mystery. The seductive stranger was most likely a dancer. She looks successful and confident: her head is held high, her shoulder is exposed, and her open chest is obscured by a fan. The woman looks past the viewer outside the canvas.
This portrait is a variation on the theme of Viennese beauty, one of the artist's favorite subjects. It simultaneously reflects the influence of Japanese art, fashionable in the modern era, and the original style of Klimt himself. The yellow background is reminiscent of his paintings of the "golden" period, such as "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" or "Kiss"... Colorful birds and curly flowers reflect the artist's abundant use of color and ornamentation. The background mimics Japanese woodcuts with their colorful, stylized patterns.
The heroine's dress and the fan, which she holds in her hands, are also richly decorated. Such a multitude of decorative elements gives the impression that Klimt is balancing between art and craft. The combination of these two components reflects trends that began to gain momentum at the dawn of the 20th century. They embraced painting, architecture, textiles, interior design and jewelry making, pushing decorative crafts out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
The sense of carelessness created by the color and ornaments in The Lady with a Fan emphasize the splendor of the central figure. As a result, the picture became a hymn to both the woman herself and the world that surrounds her.
The canvas was discovered in 1918 in the workshop of Gustav Klimt shortly after his death. A photograph has survived, which shows two works - the unfinished "Bride" and "Lady with a Fan". The first was provided to the Belvedere Museum on a long-term lease, and the second was taken out of Austria under unclear circumstances.
In Vienna, the public saw "Lady with a Fan" only once - at the exhibition of arts and crafts Kunstschau in 1920. Since then, she has disappeared for many years. According to Belvedere, in the 1960s it was bought from a certain widow of an industrialist, Rudolf Leopold, a Viennese collector and founder of his own museum. However, it is not clear how the portrait was then taken out of Austria and sold to a connoisseur from the United States. After that, "Lady with a Fan" was exhibited in Tokyo in 1991 and in Krakow a year later.
In 1994, the valuable piece was sold at an auction in New York for $ 11.6 million. At that time, this became a record for Klimt's works ever put up for auction. However, the buyer had no idea that the Austrian Federal Monuments Authority had never issued an export license for this important painting.
In 2021 - a hundred years after the first demonstration in Vienna - the collector wanted to show the work in the Austrian capital again. The state gave him a guarantee that he would return the canvas intact, and the shining image became the center of a small but important exhibition. “Lady with a Fan. Recent works of Gustav Klimt " in the Belvedere.
Author: Vlad Maslov
If most of Klimt's portraits depict secular ladies, then here he painted a model, whose identity still remains a mystery. The seductive stranger was most likely a dancer. She looks successful and confident: her head is held high, her shoulder is exposed, and her open chest is obscured by a fan. The woman looks past the viewer outside the canvas.
This portrait is a variation on the theme of Viennese beauty, one of the artist's favorite subjects. It simultaneously reflects the influence of Japanese art, fashionable in the modern era, and the original style of Klimt himself. The yellow background is reminiscent of his paintings of the "golden" period, such as "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" or "Kiss"... Colorful birds and curly flowers reflect the artist's abundant use of color and ornamentation. The background mimics Japanese woodcuts with their colorful, stylized patterns.
The heroine's dress and the fan, which she holds in her hands, are also richly decorated. Such a multitude of decorative elements gives the impression that Klimt is balancing between art and craft. The combination of these two components reflects trends that began to gain momentum at the dawn of the 20th century. They embraced painting, architecture, textiles, interior design and jewelry making, pushing decorative crafts out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
The sense of carelessness created by the color and ornaments in The Lady with a Fan emphasize the splendor of the central figure. As a result, the picture became a hymn to both the woman herself and the world that surrounds her.
The canvas was discovered in 1918 in the workshop of Gustav Klimt shortly after his death. A photograph has survived, which shows two works - the unfinished "Bride" and "Lady with a Fan". The first was provided to the Belvedere Museum on a long-term lease, and the second was taken out of Austria under unclear circumstances.
In Vienna, the public saw "Lady with a Fan" only once - at the exhibition of arts and crafts Kunstschau in 1920. Since then, she has disappeared for many years. According to Belvedere, in the 1960s it was bought from a certain widow of an industrialist, Rudolf Leopold, a Viennese collector and founder of his own museum. However, it is not clear how the portrait was then taken out of Austria and sold to a connoisseur from the United States. After that, "Lady with a Fan" was exhibited in Tokyo in 1991 and in Krakow a year later.
In 1994, the valuable piece was sold at an auction in New York for $ 11.6 million. At that time, this became a record for Klimt's works ever put up for auction. However, the buyer had no idea that the Austrian Federal Monuments Authority had never issued an export license for this important painting.
In 2021 - a hundred years after the first demonstration in Vienna - the collector wanted to show the work in the Austrian capital again. The state gave him a guarantee that he would return the canvas intact, and the shining image became the center of a small but important exhibition. “Lady with a Fan. Recent works of Gustav Klimt " in the Belvedere.
Author: Vlad Maslov
