Lot Essay
The present work comes from the celebrated series of five paintings which Klimt executed of the Schloss Kammer on the Attersee during the summers of 1908 to 1912 (N.&D.no.s 159, 166, 171, 172 and 181). Situated not far from Salzburg, the area was an exclusive resort frequented by Viennese high society. Among the group of lakes nestled in the foothills of the Alps that form the Salzkammergut region, the Attersee is one of the quietest and most picturesque, and allowed Klimt to enjoy relaxing holidays away from the bustle and sweltering heat of Vienna. He returned there virtually every summer between 1897 and 1916.
Klimt spent the summers of 1908 to 1912 in 'Oleandervilla', a house on the shores of the lake which he shared with his mistress Emilie Flöge (1874-1952) and her two sisters, Helene and Pauline. The three sisters owned a well respected Viennese fashion salon, the 'Schwestern Flöge' in the 'Casa Piccola' at 1b. Mariahilferstrasse, for which Klimt designed clothes. Klimt's younger brother Ernst (1864-1892) married Helene, and after his death, Klimt became legal guardian to their daughter Helene Flöge-Donner. Emilie was Klimt's companion for many years and his celebrated portrait of her (N.&D. 126), which he painted in 1902, hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
In a letter to Mizzi Zimmermann of August 1903, Klimt described a typical day's work at Attersee: "Early in the morning, mostly about six, a little earlier or later - I get up - if the weather is good I go into the forest nearby - I'm painting a little beech wood there (in the sun) with a few conifers in between, that lasts until 8 o'clock, then we have breakfast, after that a swim in the lake, taken with due care - after that again a little painting, when the sun's shining a picture of the lake, when the weather's overcast a landscape from the window of my room - often I don't paint in the morning but instead study my Japanese books - outside in the open. So midday comes, after eating, a little nap or reading - until afternoon coffee - before or after coffee a second swim in the lake, not regulary but mostly. After coffee it's painting again - a large poplar at twilight with a storm coming on - now and again instead of this evening painting but that's rare - then dusk - dinner - then in good time to bed and again in good time up the next morning. Now and again in this division of the day there's a little rowing in order to get my muscles toned up" (see F. Whitford, Klimt, London, 1990, p. 180).
About a quarter of Klimt's oeuvre consists of landscapes. His first known landscapes date from the year 1898 and were painted in St. Agatha, a village near Goisern and the Hallstättersee in Upper Austria. All the other oils were painted on the Attersee with the exception of three in the South Tirol - Kirche in Cassone (N.&D.185), Malcesine am Gardasee (N.&D.186) and Italienische Gartenlandschaft (N.&D.214) - and one Viennese view - Schönbrunner Park (N.&D.194) (C. M. Nebehay, op. cit., p. 282).
As is probably the case with Schloss Kammer am Attersee II, Klimt generally painted his landscapes en plein air during his summer sojourns. According to Fritz Novotny and Johannes Dobai the present work dates from his summer sojourn of 1909, since it was exhibited in the 1910 Venice Biennale (ibid).
Klimt turned to landscape painting relatively late in his career. His first landscape pictures, of the late 90s (cf N.&.D.no.s 98-99, 106-107), find Klimt employing a vertical format and depicting landscape in a symbolist manner reminiscent of the work of the Belgian Symbolist, Fernand Khnopff. "Sombre, mysterious, with an indefinable air of allegory, they seemed to embody the essence of the master's early manner" (P. Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918, London, 1975, p. 79). From 1900 onwards Klimt's landscapes are, without exception, in a square format approximately one metre square. "The majority have an extremely high horizon line, or lack one altogether, so that their subjects, whether flower beds, woods or meadows, seem to unfurl before the eye from top to bottom of the canvas, more like tapestries or rugs than paintings" (F. Whitford, op. cit., p. 184).
In common with the four other paintings in the series, Schloss Kammer am Attersee II measures 110 by 110 centimetres. It is known from contemporary reports that Klimt would roam the area with a small ivory tablet in his pocket, and every now and then look through a rectangular hole cut into it to see whether a certain section of the landscape might lend itself to painting (C. M. Nebehay, ibid., p. 232). "The square format of all the landscape paintings from 1900 on helps make them objects of meditation, conveying a sense of balanced calm which is strengthened by the paintings themselves" (S. Partsch, Klimt, Life and Work, London, 1989, p. 282).
It is intriguing to note that Klimt's landscapes are almost always unpeopled and that his portraits are almost always of figures in enclosed, hermetic settings without allusions to landscape or nature. "It might be thought that nature provided Klimt with subjects more congenial to his temperament and better suited to his style than portraits: the individuality of his sitters ultimately resisted all his attempts to subjugate them to the tyranny of decoration. Nature is more amenable to such treatment; lakes, flower beds, forests and meadows more obviously provide the basis for elaborate stylisation and patternmaking than do human beings, no matter how extravagantly dressed" (F. Whitford, ibid., p. 177).
The present painting can be considered to justify the description of Klimt as "one of the most significant landscape painters of his time...he saw in landscape the means of entering a mood, a sort of creative stimulus like a 'jewel', a 'firework', he saw the landscape's structure and the unfolding of elemental biological life forces, but the secret of his art as a landscape painter lies in the manner in which these different ways of seeing are layered and interlaced...The landscape was for him a place of contemplation, a source of joy" (see S. Partsch, ibid., p. 288).
The outstanding qualities of Klimt's landscape paintings were recognised at the time by the poet Peter Altenberg who could almost be commenting on the present work when he wrote "Are you an upright, tender friend of nature? Then allow your eyes to feast on these pictures: country gardens, beech woods, roses, sunflowers, poppies flowering! The landscape is treated as the women are, elevated, exalted, romantic! This is right, this is sacred, visible even to the sceptics with their jaded eyes! Gustav Klimt, a mysterious blend of primeval peasant and historical Romantic, praise be to you" (P. Altenberg, review of the Gebäude der Secession exhibition held at the Kunstschau, Vienna, May-Oct. 1908).
Of the five views which Klimt painted of Schloss Kammer, the present work is the only one seen from the garden. Three works show the house from the lake: Schloss Kammer am Attersee I (N.&D.159) of circa 1908 (fig. 3) in the Národní Galerie, Prague, Schloss Kammer am Attersee III (N.&D.171) of 1910 (fig. 4) in the Österreichische Galerie im Belvedere, Vienna and Schloss Kammer am Attersee IV (N.&D.172) of 1910 (fig. 6), on loan to the Österreichische Galerie im Belvedere, Vienna. The fifth work, Allee im Park von Schloss Kammer (N.&D.181) of 1912 (fig. 8), also in the Österreichische Galerie im Belvedere, Vienna, depicts a perspective of the alley of trees leading up to the house.
It is highly likely that Klimt made preparatory study drawings for his landscapes, but all were probably destroyed in a fire in Helene Flöge-Donner's apartment in Vienna in 1945. "Although Klimt painted many landscapes, only three landscape drawings have survived; they are in the few sketchbooks that have come to light, in which Klimt tended to capture first ideas in hasty drawings. There were presumably more landscape sketches in the books which were destroyed by fire in 1945. Yet there was no need here for prelimimary studies of the various aspects of a picture such as he made above all for paintings of the body. As the correspondence shows, he painted out of doors directly onto the canvas. Often he hid his easel in the bushes in order to take up painting at the same place next day. In later years he went out on the lake in his motor-boat and painted from there...It is significant that in his landscape painting Klimt is closest to Neo-Impressionism and Pointillism. A tree, a lake, a meadow was composed of tiny delicate brush-strokes...Klimt used not pure colours but various shades of one tone" (S. Partsch, ibid., p. 281).
Schloss Kammer am Attersee II has a particularly interesting provenance. It was lent to the Vienna Kunsthaus in 1920 by Hans Böhler (1884-1961), who along with his cousin Heinrich Böhler, the industrial magnate Karl Wittgenstein and the steel industrialist Viktor Zuckerkandl, has been described as the most important contemporary collectors of Klimt's work (see C. M. Nebehay, ibid., pp. 206-228). "The third large-scale collector of Klimt's work was the Böhler family or rather two sons of this family, neither of whom however worked in the family's industrial firm. The grandfather and founder of the firm, a citizen of Frankfurt, came to Vienna when he was young. The father, Dr. Otto Böhler, was a chemist and became an important personality in the iron and steel industries. The whole Böhler family, apart from being art patrons, were great music lovers and regularly attended the Bayreuth Festival. Dr. Heinrich Böhler, who lived at Belvederegasse 30 in the IVth district, was an amateur painter. Through the good offices of Josef Hoffmann he took lessons from Egon Schiele, to whom he sent monthly remittances when he was called up in 1915. Like his cousin Hans he also had Swiss citizenship...Hans Böhler was a well-known Austrian painter. At the age of eighteen he enrolled at the private academy of the pointillist Jaschke...and already in 1905 he was showing some of his drawings at an exhibition of the artists' union 'Hagenbund'. The first time he showed a painting was at the 1908 spring exhibition at the Secession...In 1909 he joined the 'Neukunstgruppe', among whose members were artists such as Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka...and Anton Faistauer. From 1911 he travelled around the world, visiting Japan, Korea, South America and the United States" (C. M. Nebehay, ibid, pp. 217-8).
It is highly likely that Schloss Kammer am Attersee II passed directly from Böhler to Friederike Beer-Monti (1891-1980), the daughter of the owner of the well-known 'Kaiserbar' in the Krügerstrasse in the Ist district of Vienna, as the two were close friends. In 1931, Beer-Monti emigrated to New York where she founded the 'Artist's Gallery'. Between 1918 and 1921 she worked in Gustav Nebehay's gallery, where her job, among others, was to apply the estate stamp to those drawings from Klimt's estate that were handled by Nebehay. According to Jane Kallir, Beer-Monti was the only person to be painted by both Klimt and Schiele; by Klimt in 1916 (N.&D.196 Museum of Modern Art, New York, see fig. 7), and by Schiele in 1914 (K. 276 in a private collection).
Christian Nebehay has recalled "Friederike Beer-Monti told me some twenty years ago that her friend Hans Böhler had asked what she wanted for Christmas: a pearl necklace or a portrait of her by Gustav Klimt. Without hesitation she chose the latter, and one day she stood, her heart pounding, before Klimt's studio in Feldmühlgasse. He stepped out in his blue working smock and asked her what she wanted. 'How come?', he said, 'you've only just been painted by Egon Schiele!'. But she nevertheless persuaded him" (ibid., p. 219).
Schloss Kammer am Attersee II was included in two pivotal early exhibitions. Shortly after it was completed it was selected as number one in a room dedicated to Klimt at the 1910 Venice Biennale. Other major works of the period which were shown include Park (N.&D. 165), in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Schlossteich in Kammer am Attersee (N.&D. 167), in the University of Oaklahoma Museum of Art and Gartenlandschaft (N.&D. 164), in the Carnegie Institute of Arts, Pittsburgh. The following year, the present work was chosen to represent Austria in the country's pavilion at the 1911 Esposizione Internazionale in Rome.
Klimt spent the summers of 1908 to 1912 in 'Oleandervilla', a house on the shores of the lake which he shared with his mistress Emilie Flöge (1874-1952) and her two sisters, Helene and Pauline. The three sisters owned a well respected Viennese fashion salon, the 'Schwestern Flöge' in the 'Casa Piccola' at 1b. Mariahilferstrasse, for which Klimt designed clothes. Klimt's younger brother Ernst (1864-1892) married Helene, and after his death, Klimt became legal guardian to their daughter Helene Flöge-Donner. Emilie was Klimt's companion for many years and his celebrated portrait of her (N.&D. 126), which he painted in 1902, hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
In a letter to Mizzi Zimmermann of August 1903, Klimt described a typical day's work at Attersee: "Early in the morning, mostly about six, a little earlier or later - I get up - if the weather is good I go into the forest nearby - I'm painting a little beech wood there (in the sun) with a few conifers in between, that lasts until 8 o'clock, then we have breakfast, after that a swim in the lake, taken with due care - after that again a little painting, when the sun's shining a picture of the lake, when the weather's overcast a landscape from the window of my room - often I don't paint in the morning but instead study my Japanese books - outside in the open. So midday comes, after eating, a little nap or reading - until afternoon coffee - before or after coffee a second swim in the lake, not regulary but mostly. After coffee it's painting again - a large poplar at twilight with a storm coming on - now and again instead of this evening painting but that's rare - then dusk - dinner - then in good time to bed and again in good time up the next morning. Now and again in this division of the day there's a little rowing in order to get my muscles toned up" (see F. Whitford, Klimt, London, 1990, p. 180).
About a quarter of Klimt's oeuvre consists of landscapes. His first known landscapes date from the year 1898 and were painted in St. Agatha, a village near Goisern and the Hallstättersee in Upper Austria. All the other oils were painted on the Attersee with the exception of three in the South Tirol - Kirche in Cassone (N.&D.185), Malcesine am Gardasee (N.&D.186) and Italienische Gartenlandschaft (N.&D.214) - and one Viennese view - Schönbrunner Park (N.&D.194) (C. M. Nebehay, op. cit., p. 282).
As is probably the case with Schloss Kammer am Attersee II, Klimt generally painted his landscapes en plein air during his summer sojourns. According to Fritz Novotny and Johannes Dobai the present work dates from his summer sojourn of 1909, since it was exhibited in the 1910 Venice Biennale (ibid).
Klimt turned to landscape painting relatively late in his career. His first landscape pictures, of the late 90s (cf N.&.D.no.s 98-99, 106-107), find Klimt employing a vertical format and depicting landscape in a symbolist manner reminiscent of the work of the Belgian Symbolist, Fernand Khnopff. "Sombre, mysterious, with an indefinable air of allegory, they seemed to embody the essence of the master's early manner" (P. Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918, London, 1975, p. 79). From 1900 onwards Klimt's landscapes are, without exception, in a square format approximately one metre square. "The majority have an extremely high horizon line, or lack one altogether, so that their subjects, whether flower beds, woods or meadows, seem to unfurl before the eye from top to bottom of the canvas, more like tapestries or rugs than paintings" (F. Whitford, op. cit., p. 184).
In common with the four other paintings in the series, Schloss Kammer am Attersee II measures 110 by 110 centimetres. It is known from contemporary reports that Klimt would roam the area with a small ivory tablet in his pocket, and every now and then look through a rectangular hole cut into it to see whether a certain section of the landscape might lend itself to painting (C. M. Nebehay, ibid., p. 232). "The square format of all the landscape paintings from 1900 on helps make them objects of meditation, conveying a sense of balanced calm which is strengthened by the paintings themselves" (S. Partsch, Klimt, Life and Work, London, 1989, p. 282).
It is intriguing to note that Klimt's landscapes are almost always unpeopled and that his portraits are almost always of figures in enclosed, hermetic settings without allusions to landscape or nature. "It might be thought that nature provided Klimt with subjects more congenial to his temperament and better suited to his style than portraits: the individuality of his sitters ultimately resisted all his attempts to subjugate them to the tyranny of decoration. Nature is more amenable to such treatment; lakes, flower beds, forests and meadows more obviously provide the basis for elaborate stylisation and patternmaking than do human beings, no matter how extravagantly dressed" (F. Whitford, ibid., p. 177).
The present painting can be considered to justify the description of Klimt as "one of the most significant landscape painters of his time...he saw in landscape the means of entering a mood, a sort of creative stimulus like a 'jewel', a 'firework', he saw the landscape's structure and the unfolding of elemental biological life forces, but the secret of his art as a landscape painter lies in the manner in which these different ways of seeing are layered and interlaced...The landscape was for him a place of contemplation, a source of joy" (see S. Partsch, ibid., p. 288).
The outstanding qualities of Klimt's landscape paintings were recognised at the time by the poet Peter Altenberg who could almost be commenting on the present work when he wrote "Are you an upright, tender friend of nature? Then allow your eyes to feast on these pictures: country gardens, beech woods, roses, sunflowers, poppies flowering! The landscape is treated as the women are, elevated, exalted, romantic! This is right, this is sacred, visible even to the sceptics with their jaded eyes! Gustav Klimt, a mysterious blend of primeval peasant and historical Romantic, praise be to you" (P. Altenberg, review of the Gebäude der Secession exhibition held at the Kunstschau, Vienna, May-Oct. 1908).
Of the five views which Klimt painted of Schloss Kammer, the present work is the only one seen from the garden. Three works show the house from the lake: Schloss Kammer am Attersee I (N.&D.159) of circa 1908 (fig. 3) in the Národní Galerie, Prague, Schloss Kammer am Attersee III (N.&D.171) of 1910 (fig. 4) in the Österreichische Galerie im Belvedere, Vienna and Schloss Kammer am Attersee IV (N.&D.172) of 1910 (fig. 6), on loan to the Österreichische Galerie im Belvedere, Vienna. The fifth work, Allee im Park von Schloss Kammer (N.&D.181) of 1912 (fig. 8), also in the Österreichische Galerie im Belvedere, Vienna, depicts a perspective of the alley of trees leading up to the house.
It is highly likely that Klimt made preparatory study drawings for his landscapes, but all were probably destroyed in a fire in Helene Flöge-Donner's apartment in Vienna in 1945. "Although Klimt painted many landscapes, only three landscape drawings have survived; they are in the few sketchbooks that have come to light, in which Klimt tended to capture first ideas in hasty drawings. There were presumably more landscape sketches in the books which were destroyed by fire in 1945. Yet there was no need here for prelimimary studies of the various aspects of a picture such as he made above all for paintings of the body. As the correspondence shows, he painted out of doors directly onto the canvas. Often he hid his easel in the bushes in order to take up painting at the same place next day. In later years he went out on the lake in his motor-boat and painted from there...It is significant that in his landscape painting Klimt is closest to Neo-Impressionism and Pointillism. A tree, a lake, a meadow was composed of tiny delicate brush-strokes...Klimt used not pure colours but various shades of one tone" (S. Partsch, ibid., p. 281).
Schloss Kammer am Attersee II has a particularly interesting provenance. It was lent to the Vienna Kunsthaus in 1920 by Hans Böhler (1884-1961), who along with his cousin Heinrich Böhler, the industrial magnate Karl Wittgenstein and the steel industrialist Viktor Zuckerkandl, has been described as the most important contemporary collectors of Klimt's work (see C. M. Nebehay, ibid., pp. 206-228). "The third large-scale collector of Klimt's work was the Böhler family or rather two sons of this family, neither of whom however worked in the family's industrial firm. The grandfather and founder of the firm, a citizen of Frankfurt, came to Vienna when he was young. The father, Dr. Otto Böhler, was a chemist and became an important personality in the iron and steel industries. The whole Böhler family, apart from being art patrons, were great music lovers and regularly attended the Bayreuth Festival. Dr. Heinrich Böhler, who lived at Belvederegasse 30 in the IVth district, was an amateur painter. Through the good offices of Josef Hoffmann he took lessons from Egon Schiele, to whom he sent monthly remittances when he was called up in 1915. Like his cousin Hans he also had Swiss citizenship...Hans Böhler was a well-known Austrian painter. At the age of eighteen he enrolled at the private academy of the pointillist Jaschke...and already in 1905 he was showing some of his drawings at an exhibition of the artists' union 'Hagenbund'. The first time he showed a painting was at the 1908 spring exhibition at the Secession...In 1909 he joined the 'Neukunstgruppe', among whose members were artists such as Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka...and Anton Faistauer. From 1911 he travelled around the world, visiting Japan, Korea, South America and the United States" (C. M. Nebehay, ibid, pp. 217-8).
It is highly likely that Schloss Kammer am Attersee II passed directly from Böhler to Friederike Beer-Monti (1891-1980), the daughter of the owner of the well-known 'Kaiserbar' in the Krügerstrasse in the Ist district of Vienna, as the two were close friends. In 1931, Beer-Monti emigrated to New York where she founded the 'Artist's Gallery'. Between 1918 and 1921 she worked in Gustav Nebehay's gallery, where her job, among others, was to apply the estate stamp to those drawings from Klimt's estate that were handled by Nebehay. According to Jane Kallir, Beer-Monti was the only person to be painted by both Klimt and Schiele; by Klimt in 1916 (N.&D.196 Museum of Modern Art, New York, see fig. 7), and by Schiele in 1914 (K. 276 in a private collection).
Christian Nebehay has recalled "Friederike Beer-Monti told me some twenty years ago that her friend Hans Böhler had asked what she wanted for Christmas: a pearl necklace or a portrait of her by Gustav Klimt. Without hesitation she chose the latter, and one day she stood, her heart pounding, before Klimt's studio in Feldmühlgasse. He stepped out in his blue working smock and asked her what she wanted. 'How come?', he said, 'you've only just been painted by Egon Schiele!'. But she nevertheless persuaded him" (ibid., p. 219).
Schloss Kammer am Attersee II was included in two pivotal early exhibitions. Shortly after it was completed it was selected as number one in a room dedicated to Klimt at the 1910 Venice Biennale. Other major works of the period which were shown include Park (N.&D. 165), in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Schlossteich in Kammer am Attersee (N.&D. 167), in the University of Oaklahoma Museum of Art and Gartenlandschaft (N.&D. 164), in the Carnegie Institute of Arts, Pittsburgh. The following year, the present work was chosen to represent Austria in the country's pavilion at the 1911 Esposizione Internazionale in Rome.