Water Serpents I (Wasserschlangen I)

Gustav Klimt

Watercolor, gouache, and pencil on parchment with gold and silver

Österreichische Galerie Belvedere

Water Serpents I is an intimate and highly distinctive work by the Austrian Symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, executed in watercolor, gouache, and pencil on parchment, enriched with gold and silver leaf. The composition presents elongated, entwined female figures — mythological water nymphs or mermaids — floating in a dreamlike aquatic realm, their serpentine bodies intertwined amid golden seaweed and shimmering aquatic motifs, with a fish gazing outward from the lower corner. Klimt, a co-founder of the Vienna Secession and a leading figure of the Jugendstil movement, employed the allegorical guise of water creatures to explore themes of femininity, sensuality, and intimate female relationships during his celebrated Golden Phase. The work belongs to a broader series exploring the motif of women in water and stands as a refined example of Klimt's synthesis of ornamental decoration, symbolic content, and the materiality of precious metals on an unusually intimate support.