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The Story of The Woman in Gold
On first seeing the film and Gustave Klimt’s painting in 2015
The Woman in Gold, the full-length portrait of a young and elegant Adele Bloch-Bauer, shimmers in the afternoon sunlight. I stand so close that I can see each delicate golden and silver brushstroke of Gustave Klimt’s masterpiece that took him three years to complete.
Inspired by a Byzantine mosaic of the Empress Theodora, Klimt painted Adele enthroned on a golden chair, adorned her with lavish jewels, and dressed her in the avant-garde fashion of early 1900s Vienna. She wears a swirling evening gown of geometric shapes and Egyptian symbols.
Adele’s beauty is only darkened by the look of weariness that clouds her face. She seems to struggle to keep her eyes open, fighting against an overwhelming exhaustion. It is as if her portrait had glimpsed into the future, as if it knew the turbulent fate that lay in store for her family and for the painting itself.
That story was captured in the 2015 film The Woman in Gold. The film recounts the valiant fight by Adele’s niece Maria Altmann after WWII to reclaim her family’s Klimt paintings that the Nazis stole. Thanks to Maria’s efforts, the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I now resides in the Neue Galerie in Manhattan. After seeing the movie in 2015, I knew I had to pay a…
