Gustav Klimt:
Bust of a young girl with her head slightly inclined, 1879 (Mädchens mit leichter Wendung des Kopfes)
Charcoal, highlighted in white, on thin pale grey cardboard
36.5 x 26.5 cm
Auctioned at Karl & Faber in 2023
(Strobl s30)

Based on the Auction House Note:
This tender portrait of a child, drawn in Klimt’s earliest years, carries the hush of quiet observation and the precision of a young artist already attuned to nuance. Created during his time at Vienna’s newly founded Kunstgewerbeschule (1877–1882), the work reflects the discipline of academic training—plaster casts, live models, and photographic studies—but also something more intimate: a gaze turned toward the everyday, the uncelebrated, the real.

The girl, unnamed and introspective, is not one of Klimt’s sisters, but perhaps a neighbor, a classmate, or simply a fleeting presence who held his attention. Her downcast eyes suggest thoughtfulness, not melancholy; her neatly arranged hair, disrupted by a few stray strands, speaks to the artist’s sensitivity to imperfection. The folds of her clothing are rendered with such care that the fabric seems to breathe. Light and shadow play across her face with quiet drama, as if Klimt were already rehearsing the emotional choreography that would later define his mature style.

Here, before the gold leaf and the ornamental flourish, Klimt is a draftsman—precise, observant, reverent. This drawing is not merely an exercise; it is a whisper of things to come. In its restraint lies its power. It is a portrait not just of a girl, but of an artist on the cusp of transformation, still tethered to tradition, yet already reaching toward something more expressive, more human.