The Klingler Quartet

The violinist Karl Klingler founded his string quartet in 1905, played first violin himself and put his brother Fridolin on viola. The Belvedere counts it among the most important chamber ensembles of the first half of the 20th century. When Oppenheimer painted the group in 1917, he left out the players' faces almost entirely. Inside the oval there are hands, bows, the scroll of a violin, the body of a cello with its sound holes, and open scores, cut off and laid over one another. The Austrian Gallery, today's Belvedere, bought the picture from the painter in 1924. In 1936 the quartet itself came to an end. Pressed by the National Socialists to replace its Jewish cellist, Ernst Silberstein, it chose to disband.