Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Gustav Klimt completed this portrait in 1907, depicting Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a wealthy Viennese sugar magnate. The painting took three years to finish and represents the pinnacle of Klimt's golden period. Adele sits within an ornate field of gold leaf, her face and hands rendered realistically while her dress and surroundings dissolve into decorative patterns.

The Bloch-Bauer family commissioned this portrait and a second one, completed in 1912. During World War II, the Nazis seized both paintings along with other family assets. Adele had died in 1925, and her will requested the paintings go to the Austrian State Gallery. However, her husband Ferdinand, who survived the war and died in exile, left everything to his nephew and nieces.

After a lengthy legal battle, Maria Altmann recovered the painting in 2006 and sold it to cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder for $135 million. It now hangs permanently at the Neue Galerie in New York City.

Sold for $135 million in 2006, then the highest price ever paid for a painting.

It's at the Neue Galerie in New York City. Gustav Klimt completed it in 1907. Ronald Lauder purchased it in 2006 for $135 million, then the highest price ever paid for a painting.

The Nazis renamed it 'Woman in Gold' to erase the Jewish identity of its subject, Adele Bloch-Bauer. The painting was seized after Austria's annexation in 1938. In 2006, after a landmark legal battle portrayed in the film 'Woman in Gold,' it was returned to Adele's niece, Maria Altmann.

Klimt applied gold leaf, silver leaf, and oil paint on canvas. The gold portions draw on Byzantine mosaic traditions he studied in Ravenna, Italy. Adele's realistic face and hands emerge from an abstract, geometric gold field decorated with eyes, spirals, and triangles.

It measures 138 cm × 138 cm (54.3 × 54.3 inches), a perfect square. Klimt worked on it for approximately three years. It's the most famous work from his 'Golden Phase' (roughly 1899-1910) and the painting most closely associated with his name.

It's associated with Symbolism and the Vienna Secession, which Klimt co-founded in 1897. The blend of realistic portraiture with abstract, decorative gold patterns creates a tension between the individual and the ornamental that defines Klimt's unique contribution to art history.

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Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer Series by Gustav Klimt

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II

The Artist

The Artist

More by Gustav Klimt

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About Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

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