Mäda Primavesi (1903–2000)

The portrait of Mäda Primavesi, painted in 1912–13, is one of Klimt's most celebrated works and among the greatest child portraits in early twentieth-century European painting. Mäda was the daughter of Otto and Eugenia Primavesi, the banking family who became among Klimt's most important late patrons, financing both the artist and the Wiener Werkstätte. The painting is remarkable for the psychological directness of the child's gaze and posture — Mäda stands frontally, feet planted wide apart, arms slightly away from her body, meeting the viewer with complete self-possession rather than the shy deference conventional in nineteenth-century child portraiture. The dress, designed in the vocabulary of the Wiener Werkstätte in which Klimt was immersed through his Primavesi connections, is rendered as an abstract field of white with delicate ornamental details. The flowering meadow or patterned floor beneath her feet continues the all-over decorative approach of Klimt's mature landscape and figure work. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the painting and it remains one of the flagship works in their European paintings collection.

The child's face and hands are rendered with exceptional sensitivity in Klimt's characteristic smooth flesh technique, achieving a psychological intimacy unusual in formal portraiture. The white dress is built in thin, luminous layers, while the patterned floor below uses the all-over botanical mark-making of his landscape practice.