Forsthaus in Weißenbach II (Garten)

Klimt painted this in the summer of 1914, staying at a forester's house in the village of Weissenbach on the Attersee, the Austrian lake he came back to year after year. He liked the building enough to paint it twice. The whole façade is smothered in ivy, so the picture reads as a near-flat green wall, broken only by windows, some open and some shut, each a small dark opening into the house, and by bright dabs of flowers in the garden and the window boxes. It is a picture of deep summer quiet. That same August, far from this lake, Austria went to war, and Klimt himself had four years left to live.