Standing Female Nude by Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt
1862-1918 | Austrian

Standing Female Nude


Stamped by the artist's estate (lower right)
Pencil on paper

Gustav Klimt stands as one of the most influential figures of modern art, celebrated for his richly ornamental vision of modern beauty. More than any other subject, Klimt’s mesmerizing female figures were his most important motif—singularly powerful in their beauty, sensuality and psychological depth. This exceptional drawing, Standing Female Nude, is a rare work connected to one of the artist’s now-lost masterpieces and a remarkable example of his genius as a draftsman.

By 1916-17, when this drawing was created, Klimt was at the height of his powers. His golden phase had given way to a freer, more daring late style, marked by heightened color, exotic patterning and an increasingly modern vision of the female form. It was during these final years of the artist’s life that he created some of his most sought-after portraits and figural compositions, including Freundinnen II, the masterwork to which our drawing is linked. 

In preparation for his ambitious portraits, Klimt made dozens of drawings, often created spontaneously in his studio where models lounged around him endlessly. In our Standing Female Nude, Klimt’s signature fluid linework brings the figure remarkably to life, as if captured perfectly in an instant. Her elongated form, lifted arm and direct gaze give the drawing both sensuality and authority. This rhythm between freedom and control is central to Klimt’s greatest drawings, and one can see how this work directly informed the alluring figures pictured in Freundinnen II.

Tragically, this painting was destroyed in 1945 in the fire at Schloss Immendorf, where numerous works by Klimt were lost in the final days of World War II. The drawings for Freundinnen II thus survive as the last direct witnesses to that vanished masterpiece.

As a founding figure of the Vienna Secession, Klimt helped lead Austrian art away from academic convention and toward a radical modern language, uniting Symbolism, Byzantine splendor, Japanese design and Art Nouveau elegance in some of the most recognizable images ever painted. His famed “Golden Phase” produced icons such as The Kiss and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, while his late portraits and landscapes reveal an artist of remarkable range, refinement and decorative genius.

Klimt’s enduring importance is affirmed not only by his presence in major institutions—including the Belvedere in Vienna, which holds the world’s largest collection of his paintings, as well as the Neue Galerie New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art—but also by his extraordinary market performance. His Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer reached an astonishing $236.4 million at Sotheby’s in 2025, becoming the most expensive modern artwork ever sold at auction.

Circa 1916-17

Provenance:
Galerie St. Etienne, New York
Private collection, acquired from the above circa 2005
M.S. Rau, New Orleans

Literature:
Marian Bisanz-Prakken, Albertina, Vienna, will include this work in her forthcoming Supplement to Alice Strobl’s catalogue raisonné of Klimt’s drawings