Ria Munk on her Deathbed

In the Vienna of 1911, when a daughter of a wealthy family died young, it was not unusual for her parents to commission a portrait of her on her deathbed. So when 24-year-old Ria Munk took her own life after an unhappy love affair, her mother Aranka turned to Gustav Klimt. Working from photographs, he painted the young woman lying among white and red carnations, calm as if asleep. Aranka rejected this version, and Klimt returned to the subject two more times, moving away from death toward a living, upright figure. This first attempt stayed closest to the event. He scattered the flowers loosely around her face, the part of the picture he finished most carefully.