Schubert at the piano I

Schubert at the Piano was commissioned to decorate the music room in the Palais Dumba. The elongated, horizontal format of the picture indicates that, like its pendent Music II, it was intended to be placed above a door.

Though the high waistlines of the young women’s dresses follow the fashion of the early nineteenth century Biedermeier period in which Schubert lived, their facial types and hair styles are very much of Klimt’s own time.

The patterned broken brushwork Klimt has used in this picture indicates his familiarity with the Neo-Impressionist techniques of Seurat and his followers but is used somewhat differently to create a flatter more decorative effect. This charming picture which was amongst the most popular and successful of Klimt’s works during his lifetime, was, like the university ceilings, lost in the conflagration at Immendorf Castle in 1945.