Gustav Klimt:
With Downcast Gaze, 1916 (Mit gesenktem Blick)
Pencil drawing on fine off‑white Japan paper
57 × 37.5 cm (22.4 × 14.7 in)
Auctioned at at Ketterer Kunst, Munich, in 2024 for €76,200 / $88,392
(Strobl s2689)

This delicate drawing from 1916 shows a young woman with her gaze lowered, her posture inward and reflective. Klimt’s pencil strokes are light and playful, yet they capture a mood of quiet concentration and gentle melancholy. The sitter seems withdrawn into herself, and it is precisely this introversion that gives the sheet its calm intensity.

Most of Klimt’s drawings were studies for paintings, but in 1916/17 he created works like this one that stand alone as independent artworks. The Vienna art scene at the time was eager to recognize modern graphic art on its own terms, and Klimt himself was represented with more than 100 autonomous drawings at the Internationale Schwarz‑Weiß‑Ausstellung in Vienna in 1913.

Even as independent works, these sheets helped Klimt to refine themes and moods. In his later drawings, he increasingly emphasized psychological presence rather than preparatory function. Here, the lowered eyes and inward focus of the sitter embody that shift.

Klimt’s late drawings also carry a painterly quality: short curved lines, set closely together, create a flickering rhythm and liveliness. This style influenced his painting of the same years, though unlike Schiele, Klimt remained faithful to the classical idea of beauty and avoided distortion.

In the last decade of his life, drawings became central to his practice. As Alice Strobl noted in her catalogue raisonné: “It was primarily Klimt’s late sheets that made for his world fame as a graphic artist.” (Die Zeichnungen, vol. III, 1912–1918, Salzburg 1984, p. 7).
(This post is partly based on the auction note, with additions and refinements for context and comparison.)