(Vienna 1862–1918)
Portrait of a child with flowers in her hair, study of hand and foot, 1898, preparatory drawing for ‘Ver Sacrum’, March number, 1898 for the child in the foreground of the border on page 13, inscribed Otto D on the lower right edge, pencil on paper, 39.8 x 29.9 cm, according to information from the owner in a frame by Josef Hoffmann, (K)

Provenance:
Primavesi Family Collection
Private Ownership, Vienna

Alice Strobl, Gustav Klimt, Die Zeichnungen 1878–1903, vol. I, Verlag der Galerie Welz, Salzburg 1980, page 120, 121, no. 369

Comparative works:
Ver Sacrum, March 1898, page 23 and Strobl no. 368

Full-page illustrations:
Emil Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, Ein Künstler aus Wien, Vienna / Leipzig 1942, ill.50;
Emil Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, Vienna 1956, ill.19

Exhibited and published:
Gustav Klimt, Painting, Design and Modern Life, Tate Liverpool, 2008, page 190, no. 169 (ill. with frame)
Gustav Klimt/Josef Hoffmann, Pioniere der Moderne, Belvedere, Vienna, 2011, pages 45 and 321 (ill. with frame)
Klimt, Nel Segno di Hoffmann e della Secessione, Museo Correr, Venice, 2012, pages 83/15 and 232 (ill. with frame)

...Ver Sacrum is the most important source of documentation for the artist’s work. Not only because of the many photographs of his works, whether finished or in intermediate phases, and of his exhibitions, but primarily those of his drawings, which one is able to date precisely on this basis. Many of them were made expressly for Ver Sacrum and may thus be considered artistic works in their own right. “The last secret was revealed to him: the art of eschewing anything expendable. His hand became a divining rod; he let it glide softly over the appearances of the world until it divulged to him in a flash what lay behind it: these masterly drawings depict the shorthand notes of his waving of the rod over the fountain of appearances. His eye had almost become blinded in the bath of fire that is the conception of the manifest; his hand now harks to the sounds of the primal source. To one side, lies the base clarity of daylight, to which he has never paid attention.” H. Bahr cited in E. Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, Vienna 1956; Klimt persönlich, Leopold Museum, Vienna, 2012.