Friends I

On 7 September 1907 the newspaper Neue Freie Presse told its Viennese readers that Klimt had finished a new picture during his summer on the Attersee. It was called The Sisters, and it showed two ladies of the city in elegant winter suits. So in the warmest weeks of the year he was painting fur. The two women almost vanish into it. One face turns towards us, the other is seen in profile, and beneath them the dark coats run together into one tall mass, broken only by a white brooch and a strip of bright pattern. Whether the pair were related is uncertain. The chequered ornament near the bottom has suggested a link to the Fledermaus, a cabaret of those years, and to the dancer Grete Wiesenthal and one of her sisters. The industrialist Eduard Ast bought the picture from the Miethke gallery.