Studie zu Bildnis Adele Bloch-Bauer: Sitzend von vorne, eine Boa über die linke Schulter gelegt

Born into Viennese bourgeoisie, Adele Bloch-Bauer met Klimt shortly before she married the industrialist and merchant banker Ferdinand Bloch in 1901. She was fond of his work, and Bloch commissioned Klimt to paint his young wife. While Klimt made many portraits of the leading ladies of Viennese belle-époque society, his works depicting Adele justly remain the most famous. She was the only woman he painted more than once, attesting to her privileged status in the artist's life and her role as an important patron and hostess of an artistic salon that regularly gathered avant-garde musicians, writers and artists.

The present drawing is a study for Adele Bloch-Bauer I, a monumental work which Klimt worked on for three years, incorporating important influences, such as the Byzantine mosaics  at Ravenna, Egyptian motifs and the sinuous linearity of Jügendstil, that came to define his style as a leading painter of the Vienna Secession.

The composition of the present drawing is close to that of the final painting: Klimt depicts Adele sitting in an armchair, slightly right of centre, and she occupies much of the vertical space, the crown of her head reaching through the top of the composition. Klimt displays his great skill as a draughtsman, using the simple technique of black chalk in an effortless manner to give the viewer a real sense of the graceful form of his subject. His interest in the decorative is evident in the attention paid to the pattern of her dress, and the resulting image is one of great elegance.