Two Reclining Female Nudes Embracing from the Right. Study for Water Snakes II, 2nd Version, 1905/06

Alice Strobl associated this drawing with a comprehensive group of reclining female nudes which Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) created in connection with the 1906/07 reworked version of his painting Water Snakes II. The painting was first shown in its final version at the Vienna Kunstschau exhibition in 1908. As in the studies for the first version, Klimt varied the motif of reclining, often seemingly sleeping female nudes, frequently rendered as couples in embrace. In the present work on paper from the Leopold Museum, Klimt rendered the complex postures of the intertwined figures with terse contours. He further positioned the group close to the upper edge of the depiction delineated by the outlines of rectangular cushions – a motif that Alice Strobl encountered in several other studies belonging to this series. Along with this study, the Leopold Museum owns five further studies for the work Water Snakes II: Study for Water Snakes II, Study for Water Snakes II, Study for Water Snakes II, Study for Water Snakes II and Study for Water Snakes II.

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