I've finally got round to seeing the Viennese portraiture exhibition at the National Gallery. I don't know a lot about the period or the main painters featured - Egon Shiele, Gustav Klimt, Gustav Mahler - but really enjoyed the show, despite its really quite dark undertones.
Klimt, whose painting 'The Kiss' has seen a thousand mugs and placemats, painted some very beautiful portraits of dead women
Portrait of Ria Munk on her Deathbed
1912
And one of the most moving drawings was by Egon Shiele, of his pregnant, dying wife
Portrait of Edith Shiele Dying
1918
But there were also lots of portraits of beautiful women in their Viennese finery, i.e lots of sartorial inspiration
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Portrait of Maria
1912
Josef Maria Auchentaller
Hermine Gallia
1914
Gustav Klimt
The show skims the surface of what preoccupied Vienna at the turn of the century - I certainly left with a long list of things to google....and it's definitely worth a visit before it closes on the 12th January.
