On Lake Attersee

Klimt painted this view of Lake Attersee in the Austrian Salzkammergut around 1900, during his summer retreats to the lake that would occupy him for nearly two decades. Unlike his ornate Viennese figure paintings, these landscape works show a radically different Klimt — one stripped of gold leaf and symbolism, focused entirely on the shimmering surface of water seen from above. The composition fills the canvas edge to edge with nothing but lake, suppressing sky and shore entirely.

Klimt painted the lake with a square-format canvas and a flat, mosaic-like touch, breaking the water's surface into short horizontal dabs of blue-green and grey. No sky appears; the horizon is abolished, leaving pure optical sensation.