Impressionist landscapes aren’t usually the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Gustav Klimt, but the painter’s rare plein-air painting of Lake Attersee in Austria has emerged from a private collection in New York for exhibition and an auction at Sotheby’s. Klimt’s “Insel im Attersee” (1902) is about to make a splash in the Modern Art Evening Auction next Tuesday, May 16, with an estimated hammer price of $45 million.
Although renowned for his portraits and in particular for his “golden phase”, Klimt was largely influenced by the natural world and spent his summers in the Austrian and Italian countryside around the turn of the 20th century, leaning into his more experimental work with unlimited inspiration from the saturated hues of its surroundings. The artist regularly summered with his sister-in-law and life partner, Austrian fashion designer Emilie Flöge, and her family at their home along Attersee after the death of his brother, Ernst, leaving the older sister of Emilie, Hélène, widow.
In 1900, Klimt began his outdoor explorations of Attersee with a keen appreciation for the changing iridescence of the water. His previous interpretation of the lake – a foggy square painting in cold tones completed that year with a new composition anchored by a staggered silhouette of an island in the upper right corner – belongs to the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria. In “Insel im Attersee”, Klimt retained the unusual square-format composition, but expanded his color palette to indicate the reflection of sunlight on the lake.
Instead of the original grayish-purple and turquoise streaks, Klimt’s updated Attersee painting is dotted with pointillist brushstrokes of yellow-green, pink, and blue ranging from pastel highlights to saturated midtones.
“Insel im Attersee” was also made significant by Klimt’s gallery owner, Austrian art historian Otto Kallir, who included the painting in one of the first exhibitions, Saved from Europeafter opening Galerie St. Etienne in New York in 1939. Kallir moved from Austria to Lucerne, Switzerland, Paris, and eventually New York between 1938 and 1939 due to the Nazi regime, saving as many works as he could of artists like Klimt, Egon Schiele and Alfred Kubin.
The painting is on view at Sotheby’s until Tuesday May 16, alongside other highlights such as “Lavender Hill Forms” by Georgia O’Keeffe (1934) and “Garden in front of Mas Debray” (1887) by Vincent van Gogh.
