Life is a Struggle (The Golden Knight)

The helmet and armor Klimt used for reference when painting the knight are currently owned by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. A pattern of circles inside rhomboids make up the brightly colored helmet, creating patches of red and gray. This helmet is based on the large helmets of the late 15th century, which had star shapes within mottled red-and-white patterns.

The armor also incorporates the works of Lorenz Helmschmied, which were created around the same time as the large helmets. Though Klimt had already painted a golden knight in the "Beethoven Frieze," which was presented to the public in 1902 for the 14th Secession exhibition, there are variations between the two—one is standing and one is on a horse; one faces right while the other faces left; one has a helmet while the other does not; and one holds a sword and the other, a lance.

A snake peeks in from the left side of the frame, seemingly in defiance of the knight. When this work was first made public, the snake had been painted standing vertically upright, and traces of this can still be seen on the surface today. Why Klimt redid the snake to its current state can only be speculated.

Klimt painted most of his landscapes on square canvases. This painting is also square, and so can be considered a variation on a landscape. A dense, overgrown forest is the knight's background. Beneath his feet is a thick, mossy tree trunk, with its bark speckled in black and white.

A similar trunk can also be seen in the gap between the horse’s two front legs. That would make the dense stippling that surrounds the knight a general representation of the leaves from those trees. Colorful flowers bloom at the horse’s feet, creating a cheerful atmosphere. There are also several white roses—a symbol of purity—in the space between the horse’s front and back legs, which seems to symbolically represent the knight’s inner psychological world as it stands in confrontation against the snake, a symbol of evil.

This painting’s greatest appeal is the liberal use of gold, of which Klimt was fond. It is not limited in use to coloring concrete objects, such as the knight’s helmet, armor, lance, the horse’s tack, and the snake; gold is also used beneath the horse’s hooves, but it does not represent anything specific here. This portion, which looks like gold leaf that could be found plating a folding screen, creates a unique and abstract pictorial space.

There is also gold dispersed among the stippled leaves on the trees.

Klimt is known for his many depictions of glamorous women, yet a first glance at this image of a knight shows no hint of that feminine brilliance. However, upon closer inspection, the horse’s mane and tail are painted in beautiful waves. The way they are expressed could be compared to the hair of the Gorgons and other devilish women Klimt painted.

The first owner of this work was the father of distinguished philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Wittgenstein.