One of the last photos of Klimt, inscribed to his sitter Johanna Staude

Klimt, Gustav, Austrian painter (1862-1918). Portrait photograph signed and inscribed.

€ 85,000.00

The half-length portrait shows the 55-year-old artist outside his studio in Vienna's Feldmühlgasse. The photograph is inscribed and signed by Klimt on the backing card: "Wien 1917 / Frau Johanna Staude zur freundlichen Erinnerung von Gustav Klimt" ("Vienna 1917 / For Mrs. Johanna Staude in fond memory from Gustav Klimt"). The photograph by Moritz Nähr (1859-1945) counts as one of the very last images preserved of the painter.

The Austrian language educator Johanna Staude (1883-1967) was the sister of the painters Leopold and Anton Widlicka and of the opera singer Richard Widlicka. Klimt's famous, unfinished portrait of her, created in 1917/18, is on show at Vienna's Belvedere Gallery, to which she herself sold it in 1963. Staude modelled not only for Klimt, but also for Egon Schiele; it is likely that Klimt also introduced her to the writer Peter Altenberg, who hailed her as a "modern angel".

Nähr is also the photographer of the famous image that shows Klimt with a cat on his arm, taken in May 1911. The two artists were close friends and used to share breakfast every day. Nähr was not only well connected with the Secessionists, but also with the imperial family and the Viennese upper classes. Among his best-known portraits are those of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and of Gustav Mahler, whom he photographed in the foyer of Vienna's Court Opera in 1907.