Sketch Sheet with Studies for the Faculty Painting “Medicine” and two Self-Portraits, 1900

The painter and graphic artist Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) created this pen and ink sketch in 1900. It is connected to the Faculty Painting Medicine. The artist took a different approach than he did for his landscape paintings and created many preparatory and accompanying sketches for the Faculty Paintings. In the case of Medicine, a composition study in oil on canvas (1898), a transfer sketch in black chalk on paper (c. 1900) as well as more than 190 preliminary sketches are documented. They give insight into Klimt’s creative process. On this sheet, the artist experimented with motifs in various degrees of execution, which were later transferred to the final composition, modified or discarded. For instance, the figure of Hygieia, the goddess of healing, in the upper right corner is easy to identify, while the head of the figure of Death is here still depicted in a frontal view. The female figure at the far right was discarded and the truncated pregnant woman at the left was mirrored in the final composition. The two bearded self-portraits of Klimt are remarkable, since the artist created only very few self-portraits.

MR, 2022