Baby (Cradle) - Gustav Klimt (1917/1918)

(Cradle)

Oil on canvas

National Gallery of Art

Baby (Cradle) is a nearly square oil painting in which an infant lies nestled within a richly layered mass of colorful fabrics and quilts, its face turned softly outward against a sage-green background. Painted in the final years of his life, the work exemplifies Klimt's late style, in which vibrant, tactile passages of color and pattern replace the gold leaf of his earlier "Golden Phase," reflecting a more expressionistic and chromatic sensibility. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession, whose work helped define the Art Nouveau style in central Europe and whose career encompassed portraiture, allegory, landscape, and decorative art. This painting stands as one of his last completed works, offering an intimate meditation on innocence and new life, themes that depart markedly from his celebrated erotic and mythological subjects.