Water Castle

Water Castle (1908) belongs to Klimt's mature landscape practice, a subject he painted with such focus at the Attersee that the aquatic themes of his landscape work and those of his symbolic figure paintings begin to cross-pollinate. A water castle — a structure rising from or adjacent to water — is a distinctly Central European architectural type, and Klimt's rendering participates in a long tradition of German and Austrian Romantic landscape painting that treats lakeside fortified architecture as a symbol of history embedded in nature. The National Gallery Prague's holding of this work connects it to a significant Central European collection of early modern painting. By 1908 Klimt's square format and all-over mark-making approach was fully established, and architectural subjects like this were absorbed into that system: the castle's walls and towers are treated with the same painterly density as the surrounding water and vegetation, refusing the conventional hierarchy that would make architecture the dominant and nature the setting. The 1908 dating places this work at the same moment as The Kiss and the Stoclet Frieze cartoons — Klimt's most celebrated achievements in figurative and decorative work — making the simultaneously produced landscapes a striking demonstration of his range.

Oil on canvas in square format with the characteristic all-over application. Water reflections are handled with horizontal strokes that create a flickering, Impressionist surface — one of the few areas in Klimt's landscape work where a clearly directional mark is dictated by subject. The castle walls are rendered with cooler, lighter paint than the organic surroundings, distinguishing masonry from nature through temperature rather than line.