Dame im Morgengewande

1894

Commission for the “Faculty Paintings” of the University

The Ministry of Education commissioned Matsch and Klimt to decorate the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. Klimt was given three large ceiling paintings — “Philosophy”, “Medicine” and “Jurisprudence” — and ten tympanum pictures.

1897

First president of the Vienna Secession

The Secession began as a union of fifty founders and Klimt was chosen as its first president: he was sponsored by the influential Carl Moll, and was the eccentric, taciturn leader regarded as steadfast and authentic. In the salon of Carl and Anna Moll he met Viennese society and began painting portraits of its ladies.

from the late 1890s

Summers on the Attersee

From the late 1890s Klimt spent every summer with the Flöge family on the Attersee and painted landscapes there — the only genre besides figure painting that seriously interested him. The locals called him the “forest demon”; space in these landscapes is flattened so completely into one plane that he is believed to have painted them through a telescope.

1897–1917

Society portraits of Viennese ladies

Over twenty years Klimt painted nearly twenty society portraits of women, which gave him financial independence; Carl Moll introduced him to many of the sitters, most of them from the Jewish upper bourgeoisie. In the portraits the ladies are hidden in sumptuous clothing, their heads and hands seeming to float detached from reality.

1898/1899

Son born: Gustav Ucicky