Water Serpents II

Water Serpents II (begun 1904, completed by 1907) is the larger canvas version of Klimt's celebrated pair of horizontal works depicting entwined female figures in an aquatic dreamscape. Alongside Water Serpents I, the work represents the full flowering of Klimt's Gold Style and his engagement with the erotic as a spiritual subject. The serpent women — naked bodies dissolving into water, hair mingling with ornament — descend from a lineage of Symbolist femmes fatales: Khnopff's sphinxes, Moreau's Salomés, and the Viennese Secession's own cult of dangerous feminine beauty. The horizontal format, unusual in Western painting, reflects the influence of Japanese kakemono scrolls, which Klimt collected. The work was shown at the 1908 Kunstschau Wien alongside The Kiss, cementing Klimt's reputation as Vienna's pre-eminent painter of erotic allegory. Its provenance passed through private Austrian collections, and the work has been exhibited internationally as a centrepiece of Klimt retrospectives. The swirling water-vegetation matrix that engulfs the figures anticipates Art Nouveau's complete merger of body and ornament.

Mixed media on canvas incorporating gold leaf and silver leaf alongside oil paint. The composition eschews conventional spatial recession entirely, treating the picture plane as a decorative field in which figures, water, and plant forms interpenetrate. Klimt's handling of the female bodies combines Ingres-like precision with flat, patterned surrounds.