Pear Tree

Gustav Klimt

Oil and casein on canvas

Harvard Art Museums, Busch-Reisinger Museum

Pear Tree (German: Birnbaum) depicts a flowering pear tree in full bloom rendered on a square canvas, with each individual dab of paint representing a single leaf, blossom, or piece of fruit. Klimt, the foremost proponent of modernist painting in Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century, deliberately chose a square format — a pure geometric shape that served as the Vienna Secession's dominant decorative motif — rather than the horizontal orientation conventional for landscape painting. The flat, shimmering field of color draws simultaneously on Post-Impressionist painting and Byzantine mosaic traditions, placing the work at a distinctive intersection of decorative and naturalistic art. Painted during Klimt's stay in Litzlberg on Lake Attersee and reworked continuously until 1918, the canvas now resides in the Harvard Art Museums' Busch-Reisinger Museum, a gift of Otto Kallir.