Two Studies of a Seated Nude with Long Hair

about 1901–1902

Medium

Black chalk and red pencil

Dimensions

31.7 × 45.2 cm

Status

In Museum Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-203931

Gustav Klimt's favored working practice was somewhat unorthodox: he employed a number of nude models who lounged around his studio striking spontaneous poses, which he captured with a few exquisitely economical strokes of chalk or pencil. Many such life studies remained independent works of art, but others inspired paintings. These sketches of a kneeling woman, her generous buttocks thrust toward the viewer and her luxuriant hair cascading around her head as if caught by a current of air or water, ultimately served as preparatory drawings for the foreground figure in Klimt's painting *Goldfish* (now in the Kunstmuseum Solothurn, Switzerland). In the finished painting, the nude retains this pose but turns her head to gaze impudently over her shoulder; Klimt initially titled it "To my critics" in reference to the controversy over three highly erotic murals he painted for the University of Vienna which had been attacked by the conservative press. The fluid, stylized treatment of the model's body and hair, which verges on abstraction, suggests his enduring identification of women with water--unbounded, immaterial and elusive--a common motif in his work. Although this d…