“Farm Garden with Crucifix”
For today, Klimt…
This oil on canvas painting, titled “Farm Garden with Crucifix,” is by the Austrian symbolist artist, Gustav Klimt, from 1911 to 1912. This painting came to a dramatic end on the last day of World War II, on May 8, 1945, when it was destroyed in a fire presumably set by retreating German forces at Schloss Immendorf in Austria.
In this painting, Klimt depicts an image of a crucifix on a pole in a rural country garden. Below Jesus on the cross is a miniature Virgin Mary statue. A variety of flowers climb up the pole, giving bursts of bright yellows, reds, purples, and whites. The flowered pole stands in a small copse of trees whose bark speckles with light. A cottage is visible in the back left of the canvas. There is an almost mosaic feel to this piece. The contrasting and dense repeated use of patterns creates a kaleidoscope effect.
“Farm Garden with Crucifix” was painted just before the onset of the Great War. Tensions had been escalating in Klimt’s homeland since Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina from the weakened Ottoman Empire in 1908. Klimt spent these years painting some of his most famous pieces. Interestingly, Klimt did not paint many religious scenes, making this piece even more unique.
Other paintings with a similar impressionism type style of dense flowers include Klimt’s “Flower Garden” from 1906 and “Farm Garden with Sunflowers” from 1913.
For more on Gustav Klimt, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
