The Klimt Nobody Knew
Marian Bisanz-Prakken
Missing works by great artists are sometimes closer to hand that one would think;
one doesn’t need to look too far afield to track them down. Even the largely known
œuvre of paintings by Gustav Klimt still has some surprises. The oil painting
“Daphne”, which until now was only known by its title, is a case in point.
But let’s start at the beginning. At the major Klimt exhibition at the Vienna Secession,
from November 1903 to January 1904, a painting was exhibited with the title
“Daphne” and given the date 1903. This painting has always puzzled Klimt scholars.
This picture with the catalogue number 16 was not illustrated or – as far as we know
– described in the art criticism of the time. In 1904 “Daphne” was exhibited in
Dresden, 1905 in Berlin. The picture was sold through Galerie Miethke in Vienna to H.
Boehler in October 1905 (this could have been Hans or Heinrich as both brothers
were collectors). This is the last documented trace of “Daphne”; after that we lose
track of this work. In the recently published entire œuvre of Klimt’s paintings, the
editor Alfred Weidinger gave “Daphne” – still believed unknown and missing – the
catalogue number 169.
It has, however, only recently appeared that this painting has been hidden behind
another name for decades. The work in question features in the catalogue raisonné of
Klimt’s paintings by Fritz Novotny and Johannes Dobai (1967) as number 130 with
the title “Girl with Blue Veil”. Information about it was scant: at the time when the
first œuvre catalogue was published all that was known of this picture was an
undated black-and-white photo, the measurements and provenance: 67 x 55 cm;
Boehler Collection, Vienna; Galerie Neumann, Vienna.
It was a great surprise for Klimt scholars and connoisseurs when the painting
appeared in the big Klimt exhibition in 2001 at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
where it was loaned from an anonymous private collection. This work that is
1
brightly painted, technically complex and artistically subtle was displayed next to the
painting “Hope I” (1903), created at the same time and one of the museum’s
highlights. Interestingly, the red-haired pregnant woman in “Hope I” and the auburn
“Girl with Blue Veil” bear a strong resemblance. In the exhibition catalogue the “Girl
with Blue Veil”, which Johannes Dobai dated 1902/03, was first illustrated on a full
page in colour.
Occasional thoughts were voiced earlier on that this painting could be identical with
the missing “Daphne” of the same date. Yet nobody followed this up as there
seemed to be many arguments against the theory: Why is there no Apollo? Where is
the allusion to Daphne’s transformation into a laurel tree? Where are the branches on
her hands and the leaves sprouting from her head? It was precisely these
components that were part of the standard repertoire in historic Apollo-and-Daphne
depictions.
In the new catalogue of Klimt’s entire painted œuvre, the “Girl with Blue Veil” did not
feature (for reasons untold), while, as previously mentioned, “Daphne” was just
given a number. This rekindled the question of whether the two paintings could
perhaps be identical.
The problem then virtually solved itself: this mysterious depiction can indeed be
traced back to the most famous source of the myth about Apollo and Daphne down
to the details – although in a very unusual way. It relates to Ovid’s
“Metamorphoses”, which gives the following account of the story.
Offended by an insulting remark, Cupid hits Apollo with an arrow that kindles love.
The victim then falls madly in love with the nymph Daphne, daughter of the river god
Peneus and the earth goddess Gaea. Daphne, however, had also been struck by one
of the god of love’s arrows, although this had the opposite effect and she lost all
interest in men. Daphne spurns her suitors and flees through secluded forests. She
begs her father, the river god Peneus, to allow her to keep her virginity, like Diana,
the goddess of hunting. Yet Peneus told her that her charm and beauty would
prevent this.
2
Daphne is then mercilessly pursued by Apollo and “lovely the virgin seemed as the
soft wind exposed her limbs, and as the zephyrs fond fluttered amid her garments,
and the breeze fanned lightly in her flowing hair she seemed most lovely to her fancy
in her flight”.1 Apollo is faster, “permitted her no rest and gained on her until his
warm breath mingled in her hair. Her strength spent, pale and faint, with pleading
eyes she gazed upon her father’s waves and prayed, ‘Help me my father, if your
flowing streams have virtue! Cover me, O mother earth! Destroy the beauty that has
injured me, or change the body that destroys my life!’” “Before her prayer was
ended, torpor seized on all her body, and a thin bark closed around her gentle bosom,
and her hair became as moving leaves; her arms were changed to waving branches,
and her active feet as clinging roots were fastened to the ground – her face was
hidden with encircling leaves.” It was only her beauty that remained. Apollo
embraced Daphne who was now a laurel tree and felt “her bosom throbbing in the
bark.” Daphne does not become his wife but “his tree” and thereafter Apollo’s curls
were adorned with laurel leaves.
In the countless artworks that focus on this dramatic story, Apollo and Daphne
usually appear as a couple – she in flight, he in hot pursuit, often touching or even
embracing her. There are just as many depictions showing the different stages in her
transformation, from the first roots sprouting from her feet and the delicate twigs on
her fingers to the final stages in her metamorphosis. Artists pounced on this motif of
the nymph, who hastens away, her body half naked amidst fluttering material or veils.
Her naked “gentle bosom” and loose, tousled hair make her even more alluring.
Usually there is water flowing through an Arcadian landscape which refers to the
river god’s role as saviour.
Back to the painting “Girl with Blue Veil” by Gustav Klimt, in which many of these
elements play a role. We once again find the artist, who started out in the style of
historicism and then converted to “modernism”, tackling this mythological theme in a
very unorthodox way. He concentrates on the young woman’s psychological state
3
just before she changes. He “zooms” into the top of Daphne’s body as she flees
from
Apollo, placing this at an angle in the picture space. Her appearance largely
corresponds with Ovid’s text: the loose, flowing hair; the veil, slipping from her body
and puffed up by the wind, the end of which she presses against herself with her left
arm; the half exposed body and especially her “gentle bosom” which Ovid stressed
and many painters lustfully accentuated. Her oneness with nature is reflected not
only in the flowery meadow, bordered by a wood at the top, but also by the two
marguerites in her hair. The delicate blue parallel stripes of the garment, puffed up
into an abstract geometric form, resemble flowing water in a characteristically
symbolist way. This in turn calls to mind the river god and it seems that Daphne is
turning towards him, her mouth open as if she is saying something. The veil, like a
stream of water, and the flowery meadow both cover large planes in the depiction
and allude to the elements of water and earth, thus symbolising the mythological
parents of the hapless nymph.
This depiction also relates to the complex subject of Daphne at a psychological level.
In her isolated pose – a frozen moment as she hastens on which is so typical of Klimt
– the young woman has to rely entirely on herself. Not even nature can provide her
with comfort and peace. An impression of inner turmoil is conveyed not only by the
pale, melancholy face in profile with her cast down eyelid but also by the hand
pressed to her chest with tensed up fingers. The young woman wants to protect her
virginity and takes flight from male passion; ultimately, however, her own beauty is
her undoing. Just before she changes into a tree she once again reveals her female
presence – sensually close and yet slipping away.
The painting “Daphne” adds a new facet to the series of mythological or biblical but
also very modern female figures in Klimt’s œuvre – like Pallas Athene, Judith, Danae
and Salome. This fleeing nymph is by no means a femme fatale but a physically
fragile and psychologically vulnerable character. Here we have Klimt’s gauntly thin,
hypernervous type of woman, often characterised around 1900 by loose, flowing hair
4
and a trance-like, meditative facial expression. In Daphne’s classic dilemma, which
collapses because the unrealistic ideal of chastity is incompatible with being desired,
Klimt is also tackling the subject of the “virgin”. Ten years later he was to devote a
major work to this complex topic – the painting “Virgin” that is today in Prague
(1913).
There are many aspects of this fascinating work which still need to be researched –
for example the rather unique relationship between figure and landscape; or the
question about whether Klimt added to the painting with a view to the presentations
in Germany (1904 and 1905); and there is also the connection with recently emerged
drawings. A subject in itself is the inspiration of international symbolism, especially
the influential Dutch artist Jan Toorop.
From these reflections we can, however, be certain that the paintings “Girl with Blue
Veil” and “Daphne”, which were previously recorded as two separate works, are in
fact the same picture. Moreover, both of these titles were first owned by the same
person – Hans or Heinrich Boehler. The question of when and why this information
regarding the original title became confused remains, however, unanswered – at least
for the present.
Illustration:
Gustav Klimt, “Daphne” (formerly: “Girl with Blue Veil”),
1903, private collection. Reproduced from: exhibition
catalogue, “Gustav Klimt – Modernism in the Making”,
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 2001, p. 12. The
original text was published in Die Presse, Spectrum,
10.11.2007, p. IV. Translated into English by Rebecca Law
1
All of the quotes are from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Translation in Blank Verse), trans. by
Brookes More (Francetown, New Hampshire: Marshall Jones Company, 1978)
5