Study for the portrait of Rose von Rosthorn-Friedmann

Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz, Sammlung Wolfgang Gurlitt, erworben 1953 Rose von Rosthorn (1864–1919) was born in Prävali (today’s Prevalje in Slovenia) to a renowned Austrian industrialist dynasty. In 1886 she married industrialist Ludwig Friedmann. Not only was Rose one of Austria’s earliest female mountaineers, she was also the first woman to climb the Watzmann Ostwand and the Thurwieserspitze in the Ortler mountain range. During World War I she volunteered as a nurse for war invalids and succumbed to typhus in 1919. Alma Mahler for one claimed that Rose had been romantically involved with Klimt.