Klimt is not only
proclaiming himself as the painter
of this work, but he's also drawing
attention to influences on his work and
trends at the time.
Hello, my name is Sarah Herring and I'm
Associate Curator here at the National
Gallery, and today I'm going to ask the
question, why do artists sign their works
of art? And we're going to have a look at
this painting by Gustav Klimt, his
portrait of Hermine Gallia
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Here the signature is particularly
prominent. It's at the top right of the
painting. He's signed it in a kind of
purple blue box or Square, and he's used
a gold lettering. So the words Gustav
Klimt appear on two lines in rather
angular lettering and he's lined up the
two words exactly. And the date 1904,
which appears at the bottom of the Box,
he's also lined up exactly with the
letters. He's actually split the numbers
in order to do that. It wasn't new for
artists to make such a feature of their
signature, but I want to have a look at
this signature in relationship to trends
at the time. So, Gustav Klimt was the
leading artist in Vienna in the early
20th century. He was a founding member of
and the first president of the Vienna
secession, founded in 1897. Which promoted
modernism in art, and painting, and
interior decoration.
He was one of the first to break down
the hierarchy between applied art and
Fine Art. He also designed textiles and
furniture, and his lifelong companion
Emilie Flöge was a fashion designer.
He was also involved in the Wiener Werkstätte
which had been founded in
1903, the Vienna workshops, which made and
designed textiles and furniture and
Jewelery.
the sitter, Gallia, was from a Jewish
Family and her husband Moritz Gallia was
president of the Austrian lighting
company, and they formed part of the
cultured middle classes of Vienna and
they commissioned paintings and
patronised artists such as Gustav Klimt.
And they lived in a newly built
apartment on Good Living Street, and they
commissioned this painting from Klimt in
1903 to hang and Hermine Gallia's
Boudoir. And also in that Boudoir was
furniture that had commissioned from
Josef Hoffmann who was one of the
leading figures in the Wiener Werkstätte.
And the furniture was white and
obviously, the white of the furniture and
the white of her dress, were supposed to
harmonise.
And the walls of the Boudoir were
covered in a blue silk,
and at intervals on the silk was a
little motif of a rose, a stylised rose,
set in a square.
So one of the aims of the Wiener Werkstätte
was the complete work of art. so such as an
interior or a building where everything
harmonised. Gallia died in 1936. The family
had converted to Catholicism, but in 1938
when Austria was annexed by Germany, they
had to flee. and the family actually
moved to Australia and they were able to
take with them this portrait, the
furniture designed by Josef Hoffman, and
also their collection of objects
designed by the Wiener Werkstätte. In fact
these objects, and the furniture, now
reside in the National Gallery
Victoria in Melbourne. So let's have a
look at the portrait itself. It's a
mixture of the organic and curvilinear
forms that were a Hallmark of Art
Nouveau, which was a trend at the
late 19th century early 20th century, and
also geometric forms.
So Gallia is standing looking at the
spectator, her head is tilted to one side,
and her hands are classed. I think she
looks very serious. She's wearing a
beautiful translucent dress, the train
brought round to the front. Around her
neck is a white boa, and she's also
wearing an over jacket with these full
sleeves decorated with these
horizontal bands of white ribbons, and
she has a pink sash around her waist, and
also very very thin pink ribbons around
her wrists. The train has, as I said is
brought round to the front in his
graceful sweep, but is decorated
with these opaque white squares and down
the centre of each square there's a
bright strip of white paint.
On the whole it's painted very very
thinly and very delicately, but what
really stands out are the jewels at her
bodice which are painted with a fair
degree of impasto.
The dress that she's wearing, it's possible
that it was designed by Klimt himself.
It's a reform dress, which was
fashionable at the time, and it was a
reaction against the constricting
clothes of the 19th century. So it's very
loose, very flowing, very artistic
The dominant tonality of the painting is
silvery. It's painted in a range of
whites and Greys, and even the carpet at
the at the bottom has this silvery
tonality. So grey strokes of paint are
brought down from the wall over the
carpet.
And I wanted to have a look at this a
bit more closely because it has a very
distinctive geometric pattern made up of
circles and squares, rather like a mosaic,
and it is said that it is inspired by
the 5th and 6th Century mosaics in the
Italian city of Ravenna which Klimt
visited in 1903. But it's also possible
that this carpet is a homage to Josef
Hoffman himself, who as I said, was a
leading figure in the Wiener Werkstätte, and
who was one of the first to really move
away from organic forms towards
geometric, where he used squares and
circles and a grid-like pattern in
his work. It is also true that the Wiener
Werkstätte had their own monogram which the
two W's were set first of all with an
oval and then into a square, and all the
designers for the Wiener Werkstätte, Klimt
included, had their own monograms which
are set within squares. Also the
secession artists, again Klimt included,
had these monograms.
So, here rather than use his own monogram
Klimt has actually set his signature
within the square.
In another portrait of the same period
of Emilie Flöge he added underneath
the signature his own monogram. But here,
as I said before, he's differentiated the
signature with his purple blue tonality
which sets it apart from the
background of the picture, and this is
also due to another factor and these
were Japanese woodblock prints from the
Edo period, and these were produced from
the 17th to the 19th centuries. And there
on those prints, artists signed their
names vertically in boxes which were
coloured differently from the rest of the
print.
And also sometimes they will add their
seal. These prints were immensely
important and influential
on painting in the late 19th century
in European art, and Klimt himself
collected such Prince and he hung them
on the walls of his Studio.
So let's return to the question, why do
artists sign their work? Primarily it's a
stamp of authorship, a proclamation of
yourself as the author of this work.
And I think in this signature because
it's such a particular design feature in
the painting, and it stands out so much
from the rest of the painting, Klimt is
not only proclaiming himself as the
painter of the of this work, but he's
also drawing attention to influences on
his work and trends at the time.
And for the sitter Gallia haven been
painted by a painter such as Gustav
Klimt, would have reinforced her standing
and status in Vienna Society.
Of course this painting was painted for
a private apartment, and hung in a
private interior, but there are visitors
to the apartment who would have
seen the painting, they would have seen
that it was by Gustav Klimt, and they
would have noticed the signature as well.
So for Hermine Gallia and her husband
this painting and Klimt's overt signature
is not just a question of Klimt loudly
proclaiming himself as the author, it
also confirms themselves and their own
status and judgment.
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