The Undiscovered Klimt: Landscape as a Key to the Secrets of the Universe

What image comes to mind when you hear the name Gustav Klimt? Most people would say gold-adorned portraits and other paintings featuring figures, yet of the roughly 230 canvases the artist left behind, more than 50 are landscapes, which he painted while summering by Lake Attersee.

"Kammer Castle at Attersee", 1910, photo Wikimedia Commons

Although Klimt was the kind of artist who tended to hole up in his studio and produce a mountain of sketches before ever touching canvas, he painted his landscapes outdoors, with no preparation at all. For him, this was a form of meditation and calm, much like the flowers Renoir painted at the end of his life. Often, so that no one would disturb him, he would set up his easel in a rowboat in the middle of the lake, just like Claude Monet (one of the few artists Klimt acknowledged and admired). But unlike Monet and the other Impressionists, he had no interest in weather conditions or shifting light; for him, landscape motifs were fragments of a great, mysterious oneness, particles of the universe that each contained the whole. Nothing attests to this more clearly than the patterns found abundantly in his landscapes, as in the rest of his work.

"Birch Forest", 1902, photo Wikimedia Commons

In many of his nature scenes you can spot a technique reminiscent of the late-19th-century Pointillism, where tiny brushstrokes are arranged rhythmically into endless patterns that seem as though they could go on forever, without edge or limit. At the same time, it could be argued that these patterns entered his work through his fascination with Byzantine icons and mosaics. Klimt loved decoration, and he began his career as a painter with so-called "decorative paintings" meant to adorn interiors. Do you remember the elaborate patterns that decorate the clothing or backgrounds of the figures he painted? Look closely, and you will find that many of them differ little from the pattern formed by birch leaves scattered across the ground.

"Cottage Garden with Sunflowers", 1905, photo Wikimedia Commons

From these patterns springs another distinctive feature, one that may not have stood out as much in Klimt's portraits but is likely the first thing you notice in his landscapes. That is the flat composition. Like many modernists of the 20th century, Klimt was entirely unconcerned with creating a perspective that recedes away from the viewer. The background has no depth, so every element of the composition seems to sit right there, directly in front of your eyes. Perhaps this is best reflected in "Cottage Garden with Sunflowers", where all the flowers seem to compete for the viewer's attention.

"The Park", 1910, photo Wikimedia Commons

But when it comes to the composition of his landscapes, flatness is not their only interesting feature. What's more, Klimt disregarded the usual rules of balanced composition. A good example of this is the painting "The Park". Lush tree foliage occupies at least eighty percent of the canvas, while the park itself is reduced to a narrow sliver left at the bottom. This creates the impression that we are standing in an impenetrable forest. He also sought new compositional solutions in famous works such as "The Kiss", where the figures of the lovers are tilted at unexpected angles.

Speaking of this famous work, you probably remember how realistically painted body parts, faces or hands are set alongside strongly stylized, abstract patterns. In this way, each only heightens the other. You can see the same thing in the famous "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer". Klimt does exactly the same in his landscapes, and one of the best examples of this is "Birch Forest". The birch bark is painted so that it looks exactly as it does in reality, yet set against this realism is a completely abstracted carpet of leaves transformed into pattern. It is a truly unique solution.

"Tree of Life", 1905, photo Wikimedia Commons

Finally, we cannot fail to mention Klimt's beloved gold, visible throughout the works of his celebrated "Golden Phase". Some believe his fascination with gold was instilled in him by his father, who worked as a goldsmith. And although most of his landscapes (with the exception of "Tree of Life") are not covered in real gold, Klimt knew how to weave in golden and orange hues so skillfully that they illuminated the canvases just as brilliantly.