Standing Female Figure; Study for Portrait of Margaret StonboroughWittgenstein (1905)

1904, Black chalk on paper, 551 x 353 mm, Strobl 1248

Verso: blue stamp: Sammlung Viktor Fogarassy; black stamp: JOHANNA ZIMPEL

Exhibitions:

Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele. Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck & Kulturhaus, Graz 1973, no. 2.

Gustav Klimt. Zeichnungen, Galerie Würthle, Vienna, 1978, no. 33; subsequently touring (uncatalogued) to Galerie im Stadthaus, Klagenfurt; Kulturhaus der Stadt Graz; Museumspavillon im Mirabellgarten, Salzburg; and Neue Galerie, Linz

Literature:

Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele. Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, exh. cat., Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck & Kulturthaus, Graz, 1973, p. 12, cat. no. 2 (illus.).

Gustav Klimt. Zeichnungen, exh. cat., Galerie Würthle, Vienna 1978, cat. no. 33.

Alice Strobl, Gustav Klimt. Die Zeichnungen, vol. II: 1904–1912, Salzburg: Verlag Galerie Welz, 1982, pp. 35, 36–37, no. 1248 (illus.)

Neue

Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein (1882–1958) was the sixth of eight children, and the youngest of three daughters, born to the dynamic industrialist Karl Wittgenstein and his wife Leopoldine, née Kalmus. Long established as patrons of Viennese musical life and more recently also of the visual arts, the couple in 1904 commissioned from Klimt (for a fee of 5,000 crowns) a portrait of Margarethe in advance of her marriage to Jerome Stonborough, an American then pursuing scientific studies in Europe. The subject was unimpressed with the result, finding that it failed to capture the serious, modern woman that she truly was. It is said to have been banned from view in the rigorously streamlined Viennese house she later acquired, designed in part by her youngest brother, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.