Adele Bloch-Bauer I Gustav Klimt Hand Painted Reproduction
Custom Oil Painting
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Adele Bauer (1881-1925) was born into a prominent Viennese Jewish banking family. In 1899, she married the wealthy sugar magnate, Ferdinand Bloch (1864-1945); he was seventeen years her senior. She was twenty-six years old when this portrait was completed. Adele was a member of cultured Viennese society and an enthusiast of contemporary art; she was intelligent, although like most women of her day, she was denied a university education. She maintained a salon that was frequented by Vienna's artistic, intellectual, and political elite. The Bloch-Bauers took strong interest in the work of Klimt. Klimt started making sketches of Adele in 1903, and more than one hundred preparatory drawings survive. Rumors of a romance between the artist and the socialite abound, but no concrete evidence of a liaison has been documented.
The completed portrait is a masterpiece of Klimt's "Golden Style." Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I was first publicly displayed in Mannheim the year it was finished, and at the 1908 "Kunstschau" in Vienna. Among its memorable reviews was one in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt that cleverly characterized the work as "Mehr Blech als Bloch" (more brass than Bloch). Regally dressed and enthroned on an upholstered armchair decorated with spirals, Adele gazes out dreamily with a rather sultry air.