Beethoven Frieze (plate 3, left wall): Yearning for Happiness

Vienna, spring 1902. The Secession stripped out its rooms and rebuilt them around a single object, Max Klinger's polychrome statue of Beethoven, and set its members to decorating the space around it. Klimt worked straight onto the side wall, on mortar laid over reed matting, in casein paint that dried quickly, because the whole installation was due to be knocked down when the show closed ten weeks later. This is where his frieze begins, with the chain of floating figures he called the yearning for happiness, drifting along the top of the wall towards a knight in armour. Nearly 60,000 people came through. The frieze was kept for one more exhibition, then cut off the wall in eight sections and left in a Vienna furniture depot for 12 years.