Friends I (The Sisters)

“During his summer sojourn on the Attersee, Gustav Klimt has created a new painting. The work is entitled ‘The Sisters’ and depicts two Viennese ladies wearing elegant winter suits,” read a notice in the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse dated 7th September 1907, documenting for the first time that Klimt’s artistic output during his summer stays on the Attersee was not limited to landscapes. The double portrait was exhibited the following day at the Viennese art dealership Galerie Miethke and was sold shortly afterwards to the industrialist and patron of the arts Eduard Ast for 10,000 crowns. The faces of the depicted, rendered from the front and in profile, as well as their dark garments merge in the upper part of the canvas. This fusion is interrupted only by a vertical, white broach on the dress of the left lady turned towards the beholder, and by a colorful ornamental decor on the right edge of the depiction. Whether the two ladies were sisters has to date not been ascertained. However, if we associate the square ornamentation in the painting with the furnishings of the Vienna cabaret Fledermaus designed around the same time, it seems possible that the depicted ladies could be identified as the dancer Grete Wiesenthal and one of her sisters, who often performed at this establishment decorated by Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte