Forester's lodge in Weissenbach I

Like a large proportion of Klimt's landscape depictions, this work is also a motif the master artist discovered during his regular summer retreats—spent on the Attersee nearly every year—in the idyllic country around the Attersee. From 1914 to 1916 he spent his summer vacations in a forester's lodge in Weissenbachtal on the Attersee. The lodge was somewhat secluded from the center of town on the slope of a mountain. A large meadow stretched out in front of the lodge. Klimt painted the forester's lodge as in many of his later landscapes: close-up, as if looking through a telescope. This greatly narrows the picture excerpt and does not allow for a larger view of the surroundings. The mountainside reaching up to the top of the painting also blocks out the sky completely, giving the depiction a peculiar hermetic effect. Klimt continued to use a pointillist painting technique especially for his landscape paintings for some time. However, he freely varied this technique, as this picture also shows. Using this method, the flower meadow in the foreground has an almost ornamental stylization. Combined with a particular focus on greens, yellows, and blues which merge together without shadows, the forester's lodge in its idyllic surroundings has the effect of a magnificent color mosaic separated from reality.