Bildnis Hermine Gallia

Klimt cared as much about the dress as the woman in it. For this 1904 portrait of Hermine Gallia, wife of a wealthy Viennese industrialist, he chose the gown himself, a loose reform dress of pale, translucent chiffon that had lately replaced the tight, wasp-waisted corseted styles. Emilie Floege, his companion and a fashion designer, may have had a hand in it. Look at the hem: its lower edge breaks into small geometric shapes, an early hint of the flat, mosaic-like patterning Klimt would soon push into his gold paintings. The Gallias were among his loyal patrons in Vienna's cultivated Jewish circles. This is the only painting by Klimt in a British public collection, in the National Gallery in London.