Klimt - Apple tree I

At first glance, Gustav Klimt's (1862-1918) landscapes appear to exhibit a more fluid development than his figurative works. Although they demonstrate a parallel transition to Impressionism, they are closer to Impressionist works than to Art Nouveau, a trend with which he is nevertheless associated.

While in his portraits the conventions (not to mention the vanity of the sitter) demanded a persistent fidelity to volumetric verisimilitude, in his landscapes Klimt was freer both in his way of seeing and in his ultimate aims. The landscapes (with no one to please but Klimt himself) are the most purely artistic works in his oeuvre, demonstrating the painter's search for form, colour and texture in their essence. Particularly in his later, more abstract landscapes, Klimt achieved a unity of conception that places these works, like Claude Monet's later landscapes, at the forefront of modernism. This detail from "Apple Tree I," one of the Austrian artist's masterpieces, reveals the pointillist touches that create the small, bushy ornament of the tree, which gives a quivering character and a light structure to the work.

Apple Tree I, 1912