The Early Works of Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was born of simple circumstances. The second of seven children, he was born on July 14, 1862 to Ernst Klimt (1834–92) and wife Anna, née Finster (1836–1915), in the former suburb of Baumgarten in Vienna. Klimt's father, who came to Vienna with his parents at the age of eight from Dragschitz near Litomerice in the former North Bohemia, worked as a self-employed gold engraver. However, he lost his savings in the stock market crisis of 1873 and had to find a way to see his large family through. Gustav attended Volkschule and Bürgerschule—Austrian elementary and secondary education—for the next eight years.

Despite their difficult financial situation, Ernst and his wife provided their son Gustav, as well as two other sons Ernst and Georg, with an education from the renowned Vienna College of Applied Arts which had opened just a few years before. A three-year apprenticeship as a college art teacher was planned initially, but Gustav and Ernst finished their studies with such flying colors that they received another two years of training in the subject of painting with the help of a state scholarship. Their brother Georg, on the other hand, specialized in craft metalwork. Gustav and Ernst Klimt first studied painting with Ferdinand Laufberger. After his sudden passing, they were then taught by Julius Victor Berger.

Klimt's professors at the School of Applied Arts, Laufberger and Berger, were among those painters who participated in numerous decorative painting assignments for the recently constructed public and private buildings along Vienna's Ringstrasse. They instructed the Klimt brothers in the technical skills of the art of painting, and also gave the young, talented students their first assignments. The two business-savvy brothers Gustav and Ernst Klimt founded a work and studio community—an "artist-company"—together with fellow student Franz Matsch in 1879 while they were still completing their studies. This company specialized in creating wall and ceiling paintings. In 1883 they moved to a collective studio in Sandwirthgasse 8 in the sixth Vienna district where they had space to create larger works as well.

In addition to the wall and ceiling paintings created by Klimt with his brother Ernst and Franz Matsch, Gustav Klimt was increasingly commissioned to paint portraits.

In these portraits created in the late 1880s and early 1890s, the young painter developed an astounding level of realism. Each detail was produced to an almost microscopic degree of perfection. These works are an impressive demonstration of the great artistry and technical painting expertise young Gustav Klimt already possessed at the time.

Around the mid-1890s he also produced several male portraits which, in contrast to his previous photo-realistic portraits, show exceptionally loose brush strokes and a soft, diffuse application of color. Klimt started on a new stylistic painting technique through these paintings which would become typical of the portraits of the late 1890s.

Ernst Klimt married Helene Flöge in October 1891. That same year Gustav Klimt became a member of the Vienna visual artists co-operative, the Künstlerhaus, which at the time was the most important artists association in Vienna. In 1892 the artist-company moved to a studio in Josefstädter Straße 21 in Vienna's eighth district. The success of the artist company took a severe hit, however, when Gustav's brother Ernst died unexpectedly in 1892. Klimt's father also died in the same year. The artist company was dissolved, and Klimt fell into a deep creative crisis. Matsch moved out of the shared studio on Josefstädter Straße and Klimt continued to work there alone. In 1894 Gustav Klimt, his mother, brother Georg, and his two unmarried sisters Klara and Hermine moved to an apartment in Westbahnstraße 36 in the seventh district of Vienna. Klimt spent the rest of his days in this family unit, which only changed when Georg married and when their mother died in 1915.