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Title: Church in Unterach am Attersee (Gustav Klimt, 1915/16)

Inventory number: K-855
Dimensions/medium: 110 x 110 cm, oil on canvas

Characteristics: Signed lower right “GUSTAV -/ KLIMT”

Auf dem Bild sieht man die Kirche in Unterach am Attersee. Das Gemälde ist von Gustav Klimt. Man sieht eine weiße Kirche und viele grüne Bäume drum herum. Davor stehen kleine Häuser mit Dächern in verschiedenen Formen. Unten im Bild ist das Wasser des Attersees, in dem sich die Gebäude leicht spiegeln. Die Farben sind grün, gelb, braun und blau – alles wirkt ruhig, warm und sommerlich. Klimt hat mit vielen kleinen, bunten Pinselstrichen gearbeitet.

Gustav Klimt, Kirche in Unterach am Attersee, 1916 © Heidi Horten Collection

“Arrived safely; forgot my opera glasses—I really need them,” Klimt writes to his sister Hermine from his vacation home on Lake Attersee in Upper Austria. The artist is on a summer retreat and is painting without a commission, purely out of personal interest. He often achieves his unconventional perspective using optical aids such as the requested opera glass or a telescope. Klimt likely isn’t capturing the small town of Unterach from a boat either. The painter is standing about three kilometers away on the opposite side of the lake. When viewed through the telescope, the church and the houses appear closer, lose their sense of volume, and are compressed into a flat, two-dimensional space. The tranquility of the painting stems from its square format and harmonious composition. The luminous dots and short strokes, which Klimt weaves together into a shimmering tapestry of color, are reminiscent of French Impressionism and Pointillism. (SW)

Summary of Provenance

Gustav Klimt completed the painting Church in Unterach on Lake Attersee in 1916. The first owner was the industrial magnate Fritz/Friedrich Redlich (1868–1921), who bequeathed the painting to his daughter Lisbeth/Elisabeth Redlich in his will. Elisabeth Redlich (1901–1983) married Stephan Gotthilf in 1924; in 1931, a portfolio published by the Austrian State Printing Office “Gustav Klimt. A Retrospective”—apparently as a “representative of his wife.” Following the Nazi annexation, Elisabeth Gotthilf, as a Jew, was forced to leave Austria under Nazi racial laws and emigrated with her family to England in 1938–39. There, in 1948, she took the name Glanville. She presumably was able to take the work with her to England, as she offered the painting for sale to the Austrian Gallery Belvedere in February 1954, though the gallery declined. No sale or confiscation due to Nazi persecution during the intervening period (between 1938 and 1945) could be established. About two years after offering the work for sale to the Belvedere, Elisabeth Glanville found a prospective buyer in Fritz Böck, a Graz-based merchant and art collector. From June 1957 onward, he was repeatedly documented in exhibition records as the lender of the work. After Fritz Böck’s death in 1966, the work passed by inheritance to his son, Peter Böck, who sold it to Heidi Horten in 2011.

+ PROVENANCE

1916First owner: Friedrich “Fritz” Redlich (1868–1921)
1921–1956/57Elisabeth Redlich, from 1924 Elisabeth Gotthilf, from 1948 Elisabeth Glanville
1937Exposition d’Art Autrichien at the Musée du Jeu de Paume des Tuileries, Paris
1937Exhibition of Austrian Painting and Sculpture in the 20th Century at the Kunstmuseum Bern
1954Offer of sale by Elisabeth Gotthilf to the Austrian Gallery Belvedere; rejected by the Austrian Gallery Belvedere
1956/57–1966Dr. Friedrich “Fritz” Böck (1895–1966), Graz; purchase arranged by Galerie Welz, Salzburg
1966–2010Dr. Peter Böck, Graz
October 28, 2010The Austrian Federal Monuments Office places the painting under protection.
2011Heidi Horten
2020HGH Asset Foundation

 

+ LITERATURE/ARCHIVES

Typewritten copy of the “Addendum and Amendment to My Will of March 2, 1920,” written and signed by Fritz Redlich on August 20, 1921, Göding, August 20, 1921, Austrian National Library, Vienna, Manuscript Collection 
Austrian Art. Monthly Journal for the Visual Arts and Their Relationship to Cultural Life, Vol. 1931, Nos. 4, 7, 8, and 9, n.p.; Art for All. Painting, Sculpture, Graphic Art, Architecture, Vol. 47, 1931/32, p. 152; Oesterreichische Buchhändler-Correspondenz, December 12, 1931, p. 274 
Exposition d’Art Autrichien, exhibition catalog, Musée du Jeu de Paume des Tuileries, Paris, Paris 1937, p. 34Exh. cat.
Austrian Painting and Sculpture in the 20th Century, exhibition catalog, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern 1937, p. 14, cat. no. 7Exh. cat.
List of Exhibition Objects to Be Insured for Bern, Kunsthaus Bern, Archive, Loan Exchange Exhibition 1937 
Gustav Klimt. A Retrospective, Vienna 1946, p. 19 
Wilhelm Jenny, Franz Pfeffer (eds.), Art in Austria 1851–1951. Contributions to Austrian Art History of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Linz 1951, p. 114 and caption for fig. 15 
Letter from Elisabeth Gotthilf (then Elisabeth Glanville) to the Austrian Gallery Belvedere dated February 24, 1954, Belvedere Archive, File No. 124/1954 
Ingomar Hatle, Gustav Klimt. A Viennese Art Nouveau Painter, unpublished dissertation, University of Graz, 1955, Appendix Works No. 126 
Emil Pirchan, Gustav Klimt, Vienna 1956, p. 55 
Austrian Landscape Painting from Schindler to Klimt, exhibition catalog, Neue Galerie at the Landesmuseum Joanneum in the Künstlerhaus Graz, Graz 1957, cat. no. 31Exh. cat.
The Classics of Austrian Modern Art from Klimt to Wotruba, exhibition catalog, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1957, cat. no. 34 (Unterach am Attersee)Exh. cat.
XXIX. Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte La Biennale di Venezia – Austrian Pavilion, exhibition catalog, Venice 1958, p. 204, cat. no. 12Exh. cat.
Letter from Elisabeth Glanville (Gotthilf) to President Otto Demus, Austrian Federal Monuments Office, dated October 9, 1958, Austrian Federal Monuments Office Vienna, Archive, Ref. 148/Res/58 
Johannes Dobai, The Early Work of Gustav Klimt, unpublished dissertation, University of Vienna, 1958, Vol. 2, p. 154 
Gustav Klimt. Memorial Exhibition on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of Gustav Klimt’s Birth. With works from private and public collections in [sic] Styria, exhibition catalog, Neue Galerie at the Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Graz 1962, cat. no. 5Exh. cat.
Gustav Klimt. Paintings and Drawings, exhibition catalog, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd., London, London 1965, cat. no. 6Exh. cat.
Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, exhibition catalog, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York 1965, p. 46, cat. no. 18Exh. cat.
Fritz Novotny, Johannes Dobai, Gustav Klimt, Salzburg 1967, p. 364

Cat. rais.

Fritz Novotny and Johannes Dobai, Gustav Klimt, 2nd ed., Salzburg 1975, p. 364

Cat. rais.

Letter from Joseph Redlich to Hermann Bahr, February 11, 1918, published in: Fritz Fellner (ed.), Poet and Scholar. Hermann Bahr and Josef Redlich in Their Letters 1896–1934, Salzburg 1980, p. 307

 

Image and Emotion. Austrian Realism 1914–1944, exhibition catalog, Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis, Bregenz, Vienna 1984, p. 10, no. 2Exhibition catalog
Gustav Klimt and the Vienna Secession 1897–1997, exhibition catalog, Vienna Secession at the Fiera di Roma, Manduria 1997, p. 64, ill. 54Exh. cat.
Gert Kerschbaumer, Master of Confusion. The Business of Art Dealer Friedrich Welz, Vienna 2000 
Ilse von zur Mühlen, “Leopold von Kalckreuth’s Triptych ‘The Three Ages of Life’. The Case of Elisabeth Gotthilf,” in: Contributions by Public Institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany on the Handling of Cultural Property Formerly Owned by Jews (Publications of the Coordination Office for Lost Cultural Property, 1), Magdeburg 2001, pp. 246–265

 

Stephan Koja (ed.), Gustav Klimt, Landscapes, exhibition catalog, Austrian Gallery Belvedere, Vienna, Munich/Berlin/London, et al., 2003, ill. p. 136, see also p. 217Exh. cat.
Bernadette Reinhold, “The Exposition d’Art Autrichien at the Jeu de Paume in Paris in 1937. A Case Study in Austro-French Cultural Policy of the Interwar Period,” in: Agnes Husslein-Arco (ed.), Vienna – Paris. Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Austrian Modernism 1880–1960, exhibition catalog, Austrian Gallery Belvedere, Vienna, Vienna 2007, pp. 307–317

Exh. cat.

Alfred Weidinger, Michaela Seiser, Eva Winkler, “Annotated Complete Catalogue of the Paintings,” in: Alfred Weidinger (ed.), Gustav Klimt, Munich/Berlin/London et al. 2007, pp. 232–311, here p. 300

Catalog

Georg Gaugusch, Once Upon a Time. The Jewish Upper Middle Class of Vienna 1800–1938, Vol. 1: A–K, Vienna 2011, pp. 990–991

 

Tobias G. Natter, “Documentation of All Klimt Paintings,” in: ibid. (ed.), Gustav Klimt. Complete Paintings, Cologne 2012, p. 364

Cat. rais.

Elizabeth Clegg, “War and Peace at the Stockholm ‘Austrian Art Exhibition’ of 1917,” in: The Burlington Magazine, October 2012, pp. 676–688, with a photograph of the exhibition hall on p. 680 
Hansjörg Krug, “Gustav Klimt selbstredend,” in: Natter 2012, no. 177–179, pp. 461–504, here pp. 503–504 
Georg Gaugusch, Wer einmal war. The Jewish Upper Middle Class of Vienna 1800–1938, Vol. 2: L–R, Vienna 2016, pp. 2872–2873 and 2874 
Monika Mayer, “The Collector and His Painting. On the History of Egon Schiele’s *Embrace* from the Heinrich Rieger Collection 1917–1954,” in: Stella Rollig, Harald Krejci (eds.), Vik Muniz, exhibition catalog, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Vienna 2018, p. 27 
Agnes Husslein Arco (ed.), WOW! The Heidi Horten Collection, exhibition catalog, Leopold Museum, Vienna, Vienna 2018, pp. 252–279, ill. p. 273Exhibition catalog