Gustav Klimt:
Will-o’-the-Wisps (Irrlichter), 1903
oil on board laid down on canvas
52.1 × 59.7 cm (20½ × 23½ in.)
Auctioned at Christie’s in 2010 for USD 3,218,500
(Natter no. 158)

Irrlichter was painted in 1903, an important transitional phase where Klimt experimented with gold and silver techniques on a smaller scale. For most of the twentieth century, the painting remained untraced in a private collection. Its existence was mainly documented through a 1903 Secession exhibition photograph, where it hung alongside large-scale works like Musik II, Philosophie, and Medizin. While those monumental canvases were destroyed in 1945, this panel survived. Its rediscovery in 1978 brought back an important physical record of Klimt’s work from this period.

The theme of Irrlichter connects directly to the faculty paintings for the University of Vienna (Philosophie, Medizin, and Jurisprudenz). These large commissions caused fierce public debate because Klimt used the female nude to represent abstract concepts. While dealing with these controversies and finishing the Beethovenfries, Klimt worked on parallel ideas on a smaller scale. Irrlichter features the same anatomical style and figures found in the preparatory studies for the university murals. The hundreds of surviving drawings from these years show how this painting developed from the same experiments.

Klimt based the work on the folklore of will-o’-the-wisps (Irrlichter): faint lights rising from marshlands that mislead travelers. This phenomenon was documented in contemporary sources. Rather than creating a realistic landscape, Klimt scatters these lights across the composition. They float around the figures, functioning as a visual representation of thoughts emerging from the dark.

This motif fit into Klimt’s interest in the boundary between science and myth. The concept of a misleading light aligns with his focus on elusive female figures. It also connects to his interest in water as a symbol for life and danger, a theme he developed during his summers at the Attersee starting in 1900. The shifting colors and reflections in Irrlichter can also be seen in Nixen (1903), which was exhibited at the same time, and laid the groundwork for his later water-serpent series (1903–1907).

These smaller panels were essential for Klimt’s public profile at the time. They allowed him to present his symbolism in a compact format at the Secession exhibitions of 1903. The successful auction of the painting in 2010 confirmed the historical and artistic value of this specific work within his career.

Note: This article was compiled with reference to the historical provenance and research compiled in the Christie’s auction catalogue note.