Gustav Klimt paintings

Gustav Klimt paintings: the guide

Gustav Klimt was born in 1862 in Baumgarten, just outside Vienna, the son of a gold engraver. He trained as a decorative painter, and by his twenties he and his brother Ernst were painting the ceilings of Vienna’s new Burgtheater. In 1897 he led a group of young artists out of the city’s official academy and founded the Vienna Secession, with Klimt as its first president. Over the next twenty years he painted the pictures Vienna is still famous for: women wrapped in gold, lovers lost in patterns, and quiet square landscapes from his summers on the Attersee. He died in Vienna in February 1918, after a stroke, at the age of 55.

Gustav Klimt’s most famous paintings

The Kiss (1907 to 1908)

A couple kneels at the edge of a flowered meadow, his robe covered in black and white rectangles, hers in circles and flowers, both dissolving into a field of real gold leaf. It is the most famous painting in Austria and the centre of Klimt’s Golden Phase. The original, almost two metres square, hangs in the Belvedere in Vienna. Read the story of The Kiss.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907)

Adele, the wife of a Viennese sugar industrialist, sits in a dress that turns into a wall of eyes, spirals and gold. The Nazis seized the painting in 1938. After a long legal fight by her niece Maria Altmann it was returned to the family in 2006 and bought for the Neue Galerie in New York, where it hangs today. Read the story of the Woman in Gold.

Judith I (1901)

The biblical heroine who beheaded Holofernes, painted not as a saint but as a society woman with half-closed eyes and the severed head almost cut off by the frame. The gold frame was made by Klimt’s brother Georg. Belvedere, Vienna. Read about Judith I.

The Tree of Life (1905 to 1911)

Spiralling branches that fill a whole wall, designed for the dining room of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels. The full-size working designs are kept at the MAK, Vienna’s Museum of Applied Arts. It is one of the most copied images Klimt ever made.

Death and Life (1910 to 1915)

On the left, Death in a robe of crosses; on the right, a tangle of sleeping people of every age. Klimt went back to it for years, repainting the gold background in a dark blue. Leopold Museum, Vienna. Read about Death and Life.

Hope II (1907 to 1908)

A pregnant woman bows her head, while a skull hides in the folds of her dress and three women pray at her feet. It is now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Read about Hope II.

The Three Ages of Woman (1905)

A child asleep on her mother’s shoulder, and beside them an old woman hiding her face. One canvas holds a whole life. The original is in Rome, at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna.

Danaë (1907)

The princess of Greek myth, curled asleep while Zeus reaches her as a shower of gold. Nearly square and almost abstract, it is one of the boldest pictures of the Golden Phase.

Water Serpents I (1904 to 1907)

Long-haired water spirits drift through green and gold, painted on parchment and finished with gold leaf. Belvedere, Vienna. Read about Water Serpents I.

The Virgin (1913)

Seven women sleep in a knot of coloured fabric, one of the late, bright paintings in which Klimt left gold behind for colour. National Gallery Prague. Read about The Virgin.

Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer (1914 to 1916)

The daughter of Klimt’s greatest patrons, standing in a white robe against a frieze of Chinese figures. In November 2025 it sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $236.4 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a modern work of art.

Birch Forest (1903) and the landscapes

Klimt painted around fifty landscapes, almost all of them on square canvases and almost all from his summers on the Attersee with Emilie Flöge. Trunks and leaves become a pattern of small dabs of colour. Beech Forest, Farm Garden with Flowers and Farmhouse in Upper Austria belong to the same quiet side of his work.

How Klimt painted

Klimt mixed oil paint with real gold and silver leaf, a craft he learned from his father’s workshop. A trip to Ravenna in 1903, where he saw the Byzantine mosaics of San Vitale, pushed his gold pictures further. Japanese prints taught him flat patterns and tall, narrow formats. The faces and hands stay soft and realistic while everything around them turns into ornament, and that contrast is what makes a Klimt instantly recognisable.

Where to see Gustav Klimt paintings

• Belvedere, Vienna: the largest Klimt collection in the world, with The Kiss, Judith I and Water Serpents I.
• Leopold Museum, Vienna: Death and Life and several landscapes.
• Secession building, Vienna: the Beethoven Frieze, painted for the 1902 exhibition.
• MAK, Vienna: the designs for the Stoclet Frieze and The Tree of Life.
• Neue Galerie, New York: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.
• Museum of Modern Art, New York: Hope II.

Gustav Klimt oil painting reproductions

Klimt died in 1918, so his paintings are in the public domain. A good Klimt reproduction comes down to the contrast he built: soft, lifelike faces and hands set against flat, mosaic-like pattern. If the faces look rushed or the pattern looks vague, the painting loses its tension.

Every painting on this page can be ordered as a hand-painted oil reproduction, painted on canvas by our artists in the size you choose. You can see finished canvases next to the originals on our samples page. Before you buy from anyone, read how to choose an oil painting reproduction.

For more of the stories behind his work, read our guide to Klimt’s famous paintings and the stories behind them.