365 Days in the Garden

Klimt’s Paintings of Women

Confident and powerful women in art.

I’ve been writing every day under a loose theme of 365 Days in the Garden. Although I initially thought my writing would focus primarily on gardening, I’ve found this challenge to myself has taken me to the world of art (such as in this writing), poetry, and family traditions. I wrote about how the challenge has impacted my writing in this haiku/short form writing.

Things I’ve learned about Klimt

In one of the pieces I wrote about my trip to the Klimt exhibit, I said I learned three things. Those three things were:

• His paintings of women evolved, and by the end of his career were large and consisted of women who were confident and powerful.
• His landscapes also evolved over time, becoming stronger and more stylized in later years.
• His artwork was sometimes controversial and even considered pornographic at times.

Klimt’s early work

The photo at the top of this writing is an example of his early work. Painted in 1894, I found it fascinating that the woman’s face was as realistic as any photo could ever be. It really appeared as if she was standing right there, her hand on a piece of furniture, with muted colors and no particular passion in the art or her beautiful face.

The next painting I looked at, Friends, reproduced above, was completed just before the artist’s one and only trip to Paris. The colors remain muted, although the women have become more interesting looking and more engaged. As I looked at this painting, I wondered what they were looking at and talking about.

They don’t look like a photograph this time, and his style during this period was heavily influenced by his love of fashion. According to Artvee, he painted five paintings of society women wrapped in furs during this time.

By 1913, Klimt was painting far more bold and colorful images of women, influenced by the great Parisian artists he saw when visiting France. This painting is of one of his patrons who purchased several of his pieces. She often held costume balls, and according to the signage at the Van Gogh, her home was designed by a friend of Klimt’s (Josef Hooffmann) with elegant floral patterns.

Although I could have used images from Wikimedia commons or Artvee (both linked above demonstrating that the images are all in the public domain), I used my photos from my visit to the Van Gogh Museum because they show the simple frames as well as the choice of colors used by the museum. Seeing these pieces of art up close was every bit as much a Day in the Garden as the days when I’ve written about planting or weeding or planning my garden.

If you enjoyed this piece and would like to see some of the pieces I’ve written so far about gardening, you can check this out.

I’m a grandmother of two delightful children, have been gardening organically for over 50 years, and I plan to write every day this year. I hope you will join me in this new venture by subscribing to get emails whenever something I write gets published. You can do that here or at the bottom of this story. If you don’t already have a membership subscription to Medium, please consider using my referral link when you join.