Ria Munk On Her Deathbed

The portrait Ria Munk on her Deathbed (1912; also known as Ria Munk I), which only marginally varies from a square format, comes with a tragic story. The painting shows a young woman who was a close relative of art collector, industrialist and patron of the arts August Lederer and his wife Serena, a good friend of Klimt’s. She was engaged to the German writer Hanns Heinz Ewers, who was notorious for his escapades and the scandals that followed. Despite the promise of a substantial dowry, he broke the engagement in a letter to Ria in which he described her as a hopeless romantic and accused her of being out of touch with reality. For Maria, the end of the engagement was an unexpected and heavy blow which led her to commit suicide shortly after Christmas 1911 by taking a revolver and shooting herself in the heart.

Klimt presumably used a photo of the laid out Maria Munk as a template for the painting. The background is held in a dark blue hue which is contrasted by a red carnation that is part of the girdle of flowers that frames the pale face of the young, still beautiful girl. The carnation and her brunette hair accentuate the contrast between her face and the rest of the picture. Only the pillow on which her head is lying seems to have taken on the complexion of her face. The half-opened lips create the impression that she is only lying asleep. Some lighter carnations have been draped at the edge of her pillow and mark the boundary between Ria and the drab covering of her deathbed.

For the sake of completeness it should be mentioned that there are two others portraits of Maria Munk. The Ria Munk II painting that was commissioned in 1913 but not accepted by the client and the never completed Ria Munk III (1917/1918). Klimt reworked Ria Munk II a few years later into the painting The Dancer.