Study for the portrait of Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein

Margarethe Stonborough-Wittgenstein (1882–1958), born in Vienna in 1882 as the daughter of industrialist and steel magnate Karl Wittgenstein and his wife Leopoldine, was the sister of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the pianist Paul Wittgenstein. In 1905 she married American industrialist Jerome Stonborough. The couple then moved to Berlin. In Berlin she had the interior of her apartment designed by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser. By 1907 she lived alternately in one of her domiciles in Berlin, New York, Paris, in Austria, e.g. in the Villa Toskana in Gmunden, and in Switzerland. After the death of her husband in 1938 she played a key role in contriving Sigmund Freud’s flight from the National Socialist regime. Being Jewish herself, she, too, was soon forced to leave Austria. After the war she returned to Vienna, where she died in 1958. The actual painting, which was commissioned by her parents as a wedding gift, depicts her standing upright in a central position, outlined in fleeting fine lines. The painting can now be seen in Munich’s Neue Pinakothek. The sketch documents Klimt’s interest in the texture of the material of the dress worn by Margarethe.