Schubert au piano II

Klimt made this in 1899 for the music room of Baron Nikolaus Dumba, a wealthy Viennese patron who loved singing and wanted Schubert, the city's own composer, glowing over his doorway. Klimt painted him at the piano by candlelight, ringed by listeners, the flames dissolving the figures into soft points of colour. It hung in Vienna for decades. Then in 1945, in the last days of the war, it was gone. The painting had been stored for safekeeping with a dozen other Klimts at Schloss Immendorf, a castle in Lower Austria, and retreating German troops set the building alight. Everything inside burned. What you can look at today is only a photograph and a few surviving studies.