14th July: Gustav Klimt

This date in 1862 was the day the artist Gustav Klimt was born. Here are ten facts about him:

1. Gustav Klimt was an Austrian painter born in Baumgarten, near Vienna. His father was a gold engraver and his mother had wanted to be a Music performer but never made it. Having seven children as she did would not have helped! Gustav was the second child.
2. He and his brothers, Ernst and Georg, all showed a talent for art. Gustav and Ernst went to the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts, where they teamed up with a friend, Franz Matsch, and called themselves the "Company of Artists". They were getting commissions by 1880.
3. Klimt started off as an academic, classical artist. His commissions included interior murals and ceilings in large public buildings on the Ringstraße in Vienna. In 1888 Klimt received the Golden Order of Merit from Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria for his contributions to murals painted in the Burgtheater in Vienna.
4. His change of style coincided with the deaths of his father and brother in 1892. As well as grieving himself, he had to assume financial responsibility for both his own family and his brother's.
5. In 1894, Klimt was commissioned to create three paintings to decorate the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna. It took him about six years to complete the three - Philosophy, Medicine, and Jurisprudence. However, they never graced the ceiling of the university because people didn't like his radical style, and thought they were verging on pornography. Klimt never accepted a public commission again. Sadly, none of the paintings exist today. All three paintings were destroyed by retreating SS forces in May 1945.
6. Unlike most artists, Klimt never painted a self-portrait. His favourite subject was the female form, although he painted some landscapes, too. Each year he would take a holiday on the shores of Attersee, where he would go out and paint. The locals called him Waldschrat ("Forest demon") because he painted with such intensity. It's possible he also used a Telescope while he was painting.
7. He is known for using gold leaf in many of his paintings during what was known as his 'Golden Phase', possibly inspired by the Byzantine mosaics he would have seen on visits to Venice and Ravenna. He was also successful during this time, enjoying both critical renown and financial success.
8. Klimt was a somewhat reclusive man. He was a founding member and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession), which aimed to promote young artists and attract the best foreign artists to Vienna. Aside from that, he rarely socialised. He was so famous by then, though, that people would come to him and ask him to paint for them, and he could afford to be picky as to which subjects he'd take on. He spent most of his days painting, clad in a robe and sandals, and no underwear.
9. His reclusiveness seemed to be no bar to his love life. He had a long term partner, Emilie Louise Flöge, a fashion designer who was his sister in law's sister. His famous painting, The Kiss, is thought to be of the two of them together. He also had affairs, and is thought to have fathered fourteen children. The fact he painted naked women and wore no underwear must have been a contributing factor - he's said to have required lengthy sittings from his subjects because he was so painstaking in his work, but I'd speculate that "sitting" wasn't always all they were doing!
10. Klimt's paintings are among some of the most valuable in the world. In November 2003, Klimt's Landhaus am Attersee sold for $29,128,000. In 2006, the 1907 portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, sold for US $135 million, surpassing Picasso's Boy With a Pipe as the highest reported price ever paid for a painting. In the same year, a woman in Los Angeles, the heir of a Jewish family that had its art stolen by the Nazis, went to an arbitration board and demanded that five Klimt paintings be returned to her by the Austrian National Gallery. The paintings are worth at least $150 million. There's even a film about her - Woman in Gold.