Schubert At The Piano

Schubert at the Piano II (1899), oil on canvas

The painting above represents a convergence of two Viennese artists: Franz Schubert (1797 - 1828) and Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918). While their lives didn’t overlap, Schubert’s music was beloved in Vienna during Klimt’s career and he himself was a fan. In 1898, Klimt was commissioned to create two paintings for the music room in the Vienna home of a wealthy industrialist, Nikolaus Dumba. Schubert At The Piano is one of the two paintings. Klimt has presented the women in dresses contemporary to his own time, not Schubert’s. It’s believed that the young woman looking directly out of the painting at the left is one of Klimt’s mistresses, who bore him two sons. The original painting no longer exists. Along with several other of Klimt’s works, it was destroyed in a fire at Schloss Immendorf—ironically, where it had been stored for safety—in the waning days of WWII. The other painting Klimt did for Dumba, also destroyed, is depicted below.

Die Musik II (1898), oil on canvas