There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I’m a painter who paints day in day out, from morning till evening - figure pictures and landscapes, more rarely portraits.
— Gustav Klimt

The Greek industrialist Nikolaus Dumba, a patron of the arts and a music lover, particularly of the music of Franz Schubert, commissioned Klimt to paint two music paintings for decoration above the doors in his music room; one beingMusic II and the other Schubert at the Piano. In it’s time Klimt’s Schubert was his most well-known work, it’s popularity only surpassed later by The Kiss. Poet, essayist and critic Hermann Bahr once wrote: “In my opinion Klimt’s Schubert is the finest painting ever done by an Austrian.”
from http://klimtcollection.blogspot.com

Music II was unfortunately either destroyed or lost in 1945.

Claudio Arrau plays Schubert Sonata D.960

Gustav Klimt never painted a self portrait, quite extraordinarily for an artist. There is one portrait of him by his friend and protégé Egon Schiele, and another painting by Schiele that we have reason to believe portrays them two together. However, although he did not like to paint himself or to be painted, we do have some photographs of him :) These that I am posting today are of him and his life partner Emilie Flöge, whom he never married but who nevertheless and inspite many other women in his life, stayed with him for almost 30 years :)

Gustav and Emilie met around 1891 : his brother Ernst Klimt married Emilie’s younger sister Helene. The two Klimt brothers and two Flöge sisters were extremely close, as siblings but also in business - as Gustav and Ernst (who was an engraver like their father) worked together in Company of Artists, Emilie and Helene owned fashion salon together called Schwestern Flöge (Flöge Sisters) on what is today as well it was in their time one of the most posh streets in Vienna - Mariahilfer Strasse. However, this idyll was soon over with the death of Ernst in 1892; Gustav was however by his will appointed Helene’s guardian and so started spending much time with Flöge family. The liaison between Emilie and Gustav became passionate and strong, although not exclusive. However, when he died in 1918 he left to her half of his belongings.

These are some photos of their life together, her wearing mostly her own designs :) and portrait of Emilie by Klimt.

There are many very famous paintings by Gustav that will be posted today, on his 150th birthday; I, however, chose the less famous and quite an early one, that I love very much for the story that goes with it :The Old Burgtheater :)

The old theatre was founded by Empress Maria Theresa and was a place of such historical and important premiers as Mozart’s operas The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, Così fan tutte or Beethoven’s 1st Symphony. The Viennese loved their old theatre and although aware of the fact that the city needed a new building for it - fell quite into despair when time to say good bye to it arrived. In one of my favourite books - Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday - the writer describes just how important the old Burgtheater really was to the Viennese, their love and self-identification with it that are not just almost incomprehensible to us today, with this time distance, but that were even in their own time considered somewhat bizarre to all that were not from this city. Thus he describes how on a day that it was torn down, half of Vienna came sombre looking and sad, as if that was someone’s funeral; after the last performance, he says, after the last note died out, everybody rushed onto the stage to grab at least a piece of wood from it, as a memory. For decades, Zweig writes, you could see parts of the old Burgtheater in peoples homes, exhibited almost as a piece of relic. 

This painting was started in 1888. the year that the Austrian national theatre moved from this old building to the new one on Ringstraße. For his work on this new theater Klimt received the Golden order of Merit from Emperor Franz Josef I. 


Zuschauerraum im alten Burgtheater in Wien 1888, by Gustav Klimt, the photograph of the outside of the old building and the new one on Ringstraße, right after its construction. 

Klimt’s Atelier in der Villa Klimt in Wien-Hietzing

from http://www.klimt.com

Whoever wants to know something about me - as an artist which alone is significant - they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.
— Gustav Klimt

I can paint and draw. I believe this myself and a few other people say that they believe this too. But I’m not certain of whether it’s true.
— Gustav Klimt

Today is 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt :) because of which there has been and will continue to be for another 6 months a year of Gustav Klimtin Vienna, with many exhibitions and events. So, if you get to be in luck to find yourself in Vienna or anywhere near - don’t forget to check out which of these exhibitions are currently on :)

Happy Birthday Gustav Klimt !

In the 1912 painting Hermits, Schiele melded two life-sized figures into one double-figure. The faces exhibit the features of Schiele (at left) and of his mentor Gustav Klimt (at right). In a letter to Carl Reininghaus, Schiele wrote:

In the large painting one doesn’t see exactly how the two are standing there, at first glance. He continued by stating that this is important to the painting,  for  otherwise, the poetic idea and the vision would be lost, as would the ambiguity of the figures which, conceived as being crumpled into themselves, are the bodies of individuals who have grown tired of life, grown suicidal  — but even so, they are people of emotion. — Think of these two as being like a cloud of dust similar to this Earth, a cloud which wants to grow into something more but must necessarily collapse, its strength spent.

Schiele painted the great role model of his youth, Gustav Klimt, with closed eyes and a strangely weak and lifeless appearance. To himself he gave full lips which form an oddly striking contrast with his sunken cheeks, his painfully wide-open eyes and the wreath of dried thistles. From the ground below there grows a single rose, its petals drying out and its stem bending. One sees here a “terminal illness” taking hold of life. In the letter quoted above, Schiele writes that he would not change anything about this painting, for: “it arose from pure ardency.

text from http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/leopoldcollection/masterpieces/51

I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds.

In 1907, Schiele sought out Gustav Klimt. Klimt generously mentored younger artists, and he took a particular interest in the gifted young Schiele, buying his drawings, offering to exchange them for some of his own, arranging models for him and introducing him to potential patrons. He also introduced Schiele to the Wiener Werkstätte, the arts and crafts workshop connected with the Secession. In 1908 Schiele had his first exhibition, in Klosterneuburg. Schiele left the Academy in 1909, after completing his third year, and founded the Neukunstgruppe (“New Art Group”) with other dissatisfied students.

Klimt invited Schiele to exhibit some of his work at the 1909 Vienna Kunstschau, where he encountered the work of Edvard Munch, Jan Toorop, and Vincent van Gogh among others. Once free of the constraints of the Academy’s conventions, Schiele began to explore not only the human form, but also human sexuality. At the time, many found the explicitness of his works disturbing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egon_Schiele

Egon Schiele - Gustav Klimt im blauen Malerkittel - 1913.