Gustav Klimt's Landscapes: Gardens, Lakes and Birch Forests

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) is best known for the gold of The Kiss, but he also painted around fifty landscapes. Almost all of them were made on summer holidays, most at the Attersee, a lake in the Salzkammergut region of Austria, where he stayed with the Flöge family from 1900 to 1916.

Why his landscapes are square

Klimt painted nearly all his landscapes on square canvases. He framed his views through a viewfinder and sometimes looked through opera glasses or a telescope, which flattens distance and makes trees, water and houses sit on the surface like a pattern. That is why his landscapes feel so decorative, close to the patterned backgrounds of his portraits.

Gardens and flowers

Klimt's garden paintings fill the whole canvas with flowers, with almost no sky. Country Garden With Sunflowers (1906) and Landscape Garden (Meadow in Flower) are good examples: thousands of small dabs of colour that look beautiful in a bedroom or a dining room.

Birch forests and farmhouses

Klimt also painted rows of thin birch trunks and farmhouses half hidden behind orchards. Farmhouse With Birch Trees (1903) shows how he used vertical trunks like stripes across the canvas, a calm choice for a living room or study.

The Attersee and its castle

Many paintings show the lake itself, its villages and the Schloss Kammer castle on the shore. See The Schloss Kammer on the Attersee III (1910), Church in Unterach on the Attersee and Country House by the Attersee.

Lake Garda, 1913

In 1913 Klimt spent the summer at Lake Garda in Italy and painted the town of Malcesine and the church at Cassone, with houses stacked up the hillside like a mosaic.

Choosing a Klimt landscape poster

• For a calm, green room: the birch forest and farmhouse paintings.
• For colour: the flower gardens.
• For a lake or coastal home: the Attersee views.

All Klimt posters are made to order in 45×60 cm and 75×100 cm with free shipping. See all Gustav Klimt posters.