La Fiancée

Klimt began this in 1917, in the fourth winter of a war that had left Vienna short of coal and of food. He was 55 and working in a garden studio in Hietzing, on the edge of the city, when a stroke stopped him in January 1918. He died a few weeks later and the canvas stayed on the easel. Because it was never finished, his method is on show. Several heads across the top are still charcoal lines on bare canvas. The woman at the right was painted first as a complete nude, worked out body and all, and the patterned dress meant to cover her had only been started, spread across her like a skin of ornament that breaks off halfway.