Attersee (On Lake Attersee)

Gustav Klimt

Oil on canvas

Leopold Museum

Painted during Klimt's first summer stay at Lake Attersee in 1900, this oil on canvas is a remarkably radical composition in which the nearly square format is almost entirely consumed by the turquoise, slightly undulating surface of the water, with only the dark treetops of Litzlberg Island visible in the upper right corner. A leading figure of the Vienna Secession and Symbolist movements, Klimt approached the lake's surface as an exercise in near-abstraction, depicting waves as freely rendered turquoise speckles that progressively diminish in size toward the top of the canvas, creating a subtle illusion of depth. The vivid turquoise hue reflects the actual color of the Attersee in early summer mornings, and the work bears a notable affinity with contemporaneous Impressionist explorations of light on water. First exhibited at the 10th Vienna Secession Exhibition in 1901, it drew immediate critical enthusiasm and stands as the most abstract of all Klimt's landscape paintings.