Dama con sombrero y boa de plumas

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.