Asked which he would most like to buy, Lauder replied, Adele Bloch-Bauer II, a later (1912) and far different portrait of the Viennese salon hostess. In Adele Bloch-Bauer I she is depicted in a regal setting, clad in an exotic richly patterned gold gown and posed against a tapestry of gold decorations.
In the 1912 portrait she wears fashionable street clothes, including a wide-brimmed hat, and stands before a brightly colored floral background. Japanese motifs like warrior horses appear in the rear top portion of the canvas.
Art historians and chroniclers of Vienna society in the early 20th century have long suspected that Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer were lovers. This theory is shared by Altmann, who remembers her aunt well, although she was just nine when Bloch-Bauer died. Klimt made hundreds of preparatory drawings of Bloch-Bauer for the portraits.
Altmann said she doubted that the brightly colored dress in the 1912 portrait was really her aunt's. “She never dressed loudly,” she said. “I always remember her wearing long, simple white dresses and holding a gold cigarette holder. I don't remember anything like the dress in the picture.”
Altmann said she had no particular favorite among the Klimt paintings. “When you grow up with something, you are so used to it,” she said. “There were so many other beautiful things in the house, like porcelains, furniture and other paintings. I personally love the landscapes.”
The earliest, Birch Forest from 1903, is an Austrian landscape rendered in rich autumnal colors. “It's quite an intense picture,” said Guy Bennett, head of Impressionist and modern paintings at Christie's in New York, “and one of the few woods scenes Klimt painted.” He added that it is “comparable in quality to another of his landscapes,” hanging in the Moderne Galerie in Dresden.
Another landscape, Apple Tree I (circa 1912), shows the tree in full flower in shimmering pinks and reds, its branches spread wide: for Klimt, a symbol of the tree of life.
The remaining landscape, Houses at Unterach on the Attersee, was painted around 1916 on the south shore of a resort town on a lake in the countryside east of Salzburg where Klimt spent the summers of 1914, 1915 and 1916. A portion of the town is shown from across the lake, in a style influenced by Cezanne's geometric renderings of Mont Sainte-Victoire.
Altmann said it did not matter to her whether Christie's arranges an auction or private sales of the Klimts, which remain on view at the Neue Galerie through Sept. 18. “I've never been to an auction, so I think it would be exciting,” she said.
“I'm simply hoping for the best,” she added.
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