Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

A woman almost dissolved in gold

Adele Bloch-Bauer was the wife of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Viennese sugar industrialist, and a host of one of the city’s cultural salons. Her husband commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint her, and the portrait was finished in 1907, at the height of what is often called Klimt’s golden period.

The canvas is square, 138 by 138 centimetres, and painted in oil with gold and silver leaf. Only her face, shoulders and hands are painted naturalistically. Everything else turns into ornament.

Since 2006 it has belonged to the Neue Galerie in New York, the museum of German and Austrian art founded by Ronald Lauder.

A real face and nervous hands

Adele’s face is pale and delicately modelled, with dark piled-up hair, heavy-lidded eyes and red lips slightly parted. It is the most conventional part of the picture, and it makes her presence feel real amid the gold.

Her hands are clasped high against her chest, fingers twisted together. The gesture is often described as tense or self-conscious. Some writers connect it with a deformed finger she is said to have hidden, though that story is hard to confirm. Heavy gold bracelets circle her wrist.

Her dress is covered in eyes

The gown is a field of golden triangles, many containing a stylised eye. The motif recalls ancient Egyptian eye symbols, and Klimt is known to have been interested in Egyptian, Byzantine and Mycenaean art.

The eyes make the dress strangely alert. Viewers look at Adele, and her clothing appears to look back.

A chair hidden in the pattern

Adele is seated, though it takes time to see it. The armchair is only suggested by spirals and by a panel of squares at the left. Figure, chair and background merge into one flat golden surface.

At the lower left, a single patch of green floor breaks the gold. It is one of the few hints of real space. Klimt had seen the gold mosaics of Ravenna in 1903, and that experience is often linked to the flat, shimmering effect of this period.

Seized, restituted, sold

After Austria’s annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938, the Bloch-Bauer collection was seized. The portrait later entered the Austrian Gallery in Vienna. Adele had died in 1925; her niece Maria Altmann spent years in court arguing that the painting belonged to Ferdinand’s heirs.

In 2005 an arbitration panel in Austria ruled that the painting should be returned to the heirs. In 2006 it was sold to Ronald Lauder for the Neue Galerie, for a price widely reported as 135 million dollars. The story was later told in the film Woman in Gold.

Who was Adele Bloch-Bauer?

Adele Bauer was born in 1881 into a wealthy Jewish family in Vienna. At eighteen she married Ferdinand Bloch, a sugar manufacturer, and they combined their names. Adele was intelligent and cultured, interested in literature and politics, and she hosted a salon attended by writers, musicians and politicians. She was the only person Klimt painted twice in full-length portraits; the second, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II, dates from 1912.

She died in 1925, aged forty-three. In her will she asked her husband to leave the Klimt paintings to the Austrian state gallery after his death.

How the gold was applied

Klimt’s father was a gold engraver, and Klimt learned the craft as a young man. In this portrait, he applied gold and silver leaf in layers, adding raised patterns in gesso and paint. Some areas are flat gold; others are textured or decorated with small motifs. The result shimmers and changes as the viewer moves.

The portrait took about three years to complete, and Klimt made more than one hundred preparatory drawings.

Symbols in the pattern

The dress and background are filled with motifs: eyes, spirals, rectangles, and letters A and B for Adele Bloch. The eyes recall ancient Egyptian symbols, and the spirals suggest Mycenaean art. Klimt combined influences from many cultures to create a unique, modern ornament.

A famous legal battle

After the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Ferdinand fled, and his property, including the Klimt paintings, was seized. After the war, the portrait hung in the Belvedere in Vienna, which claimed that Adele’s will had left it to the museum. Ferdinand’s niece, Maria Altmann, who lived in Los Angeles, argued that the paintings belonged to Ferdinand, not Adele, and that he had left them to his heirs.

After a long legal battle, an arbitration panel in Austria ruled in her favour in 2006. The paintings were returned to the family. The story was told in the film Woman in Gold, released in 2015.

Where to see it

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I hangs in the Neue Galerie in New York, founded by Ronald Lauder, who bought it in 2006. Our hand-painted oil reproduction follows this composition. For more portraits of women, explore our famous paintings of women.

Questions about Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Who was Adele Bloch-Bauer?

A Viennese salon host, married to the industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who commissioned the portrait.

Where is the original?

Neue Galerie, New York.

Why is it called Woman in Gold?

The nickname comes from the gold leaf that covers most of the canvas. It became the title of a 2015 film about the restitution case.

How large is it?

138 × 138 centimetres, oil, silver and gold on canvas.

Who was Maria Altmann?

Adele’s niece, who won the legal battle to recover the painting in 2006.

Is there a film about the painting?

Yes. Woman in Gold (2015) tells the story of its restitution.

Sources and image credit

• Neue Galerie New York: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
• Wikimedia Commons: Porträt der Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Public-domain reproduction of Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), via Wikimedia Commons. Detail images are crops of the same historical painting; no reconstruction or upscaling.