Fable

Fable was painted in 1883, the year that Klimt and his brother Ernst graduated from the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Sciences) in Vienna. It resulted from a commission to produce designs for a three volume book entitled Allegories and Emblems, which was intended to update the traditional allegorical language used by artists in order to encompass aspects of modern life, such as commerce and technology. Amongst the other artists who contributed to this prestigious publication were two who were later to be seen as principal rivals to Klimt in the German speaking world – Max Klinger and Franz von Stuck. Though an accomplished piece of work for a twenty one year old, and attractive in its own way, Fable shows no hint of the distinctive style for which Klimt was to become famous more than a decade later. At this stage in his career Klimt was completely under the spell of the so-called “Painter Prince”, Hans Mackart, then at the height of his fame and to be forever associated with the pompous overblown historicism of the newly constructed public buildings on the Vienna Ringstrasse. As a student, Klimt had been so in awe of Makart that he and his brother Ernst and their fellow student Franz Matsch bribed Makart’s servant to let them into the artist’s studio to inspect his vast works while the Master took his siesta.