Gustav Klimt - Farm House with birch trees 1900
Farm House with birch trees 1900
80x80cm oil/canvas
Sold for: USD 3.71 million
Auction house: Sotheby’s, London
Sale date: 21 June 2004
Seller: Heirs of Hermine Lasus
Buyer: Anonymous buyer
From Sotheby’s, London:
In adopting the square format, and almost abandoning the horizon line, Klimt challenged the traditional notion of landscape painting with a foreground and a background, and transformed the canvas into a decorative plane, speckled with small brushstrokes of brilliant colour, giving the painting a jewel-like quality. The lack of sky, as well as the lack of a light source or shadows – indications of the temporary, the passing - render the work an autonomous, self-contained character. The landscape acquires an ethereal, meditative quality, with the aim of capturing the state of mind or evoking a mood, rather than recording a specific scenery.