Lady with Hat and Feather Boa

Klimt is remembered for his golden society portraits, commissioned by Vienna's wealthiest families and worked up over months. This is something else. Around 1910 he painted a run of unnamed women in big hats and feather boas, pictures no one had ordered and no one was paying for. Freed from having to flatter a particular client, he worked faster and looser, with a loaded brush. Here a broad dark hat and a black boa swallow most of the face, leaving little more than the eyes, a suggestion of red hair and a hint of the mouth. Behind her the background dissolves into streaks of colour that read almost like a busy street. He kept these smaller, private pictures apart from the grand commissions that paid his way.