Hope II

Hope II, completed in 1907–1908 and now in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is Klimt's second treatment of a pregnant woman as a symbol of human continuity and the persistence of life in the face of mortality. Hope I (1903) had shown a pregnant nude with allegorical death figures surrounding her; Hope II replaces explicit allegorical confrontation with a more interior, meditative register. The pregnant woman stands with bowed head, draped in a richly ornamented golden robe, while three female heads huddle at the base of her form — references to the Fates or to the community of human experience. MoMA acquired the painting in 1978, recognising its significance in Klimt's symbolic production. The gold robe locates the work firmly in the Golden Phase and connects it to the ornamental language of the Stoclet Frieze cartoons and the Kiss. Klimt was preoccupied throughout this period with the relationship between biological continuity — pregnancy, birth, infancy — and the decorative vocabulary of ornament, as if the surface patterning of Art Nouveau were itself a kind of life force. The bowed head gives the figure an inward quality quite different from the direct gazes of his portrait subjects, suggesting contemplation rather than confrontation. The three huddled faces below recall the faces embedded in the Beethoven Frieze's hostile powers, but here they carry a supportive rather than threatening symbolic valence.

Oil, gold leaf, and silver on canvas. The figure is enveloped from shoulder to floor in a garment of gold ornament, with the pregnant belly visible as a rounded protrusion within the draped form. The three small faces at the base are painted with the same smooth naturalistic handling as the main figure's face. The background is a warm neutral tone that allows the gold robe to read as the dominant visual element.