Gustav Klimt:
Bust Portrait of a Girl in Profile Facing Left (Brustbild eines Mädchens im Profil nach links) (1895)
Pencil, heightened with white
30.7 × 23.8 cm
Private collection
(Strobl s264)

When viewed in person, the drawing reveals an even greater softness than descriptions suggest. Pauline’s profile is built from the lightest pencil lines, her nose and mouth defined with a delicacy that feels almost protective. Klimt lets the contour of her cheek dissolve into the warm tone of the paper, lifting it only with a faint touch of white chalk that gives her face a quiet, inward glow. Her hair, gathered in a loose braid with gentle waves falling forward, is rendered with a sensitivity that suggests familiarity rather than formality. The high collar, lightly heightened with white, adds a subtle luminosity around her neck, making the entire portrait feel like a moment held in stillness.

Pauline Flöge, born in 1868, belonged to one of the most distinctive female circles in fin‑de‑siècle Vienna. Together with her sisters Helene and Emilie, she founded the fashion salon Schwestern Flöge at the Casa Piccola on Mariahilfer Straße 1c. At a time when Austrian women rarely entered business, the three sisters created a thriving enterprise that quickly became a centre of modern taste.

Their clientele included actresses, patrons, and the city’s most stylish women—those drawn to the reform dress the sisters championed, garments that rejected corsetry and aligned with the artistic ideals of the Secession. The Flöge sisters were not merely dressmakers but collaborators in a cultural shift, offering a new way of moving, dressing, and presenting oneself in a rapidly changing Vienna.

Within this trio, Pauline played a vital role in the daily running of the salon. Her life was closely intertwined with that of her sisters, especially Emilie, Klimt’s lifelong companion. Pauline died suddenly in 1917, and a painting of her on her deathbed is said to have existed, though its whereabouts remain unknown.

This drawing, once owned by her sister Helene Flöge (Donner), preserves an earlier, gentler image of her—before the war years, before the losses that reshaped the family. In Klimt’s quiet lines, one senses not only Pauline’s likeness but the early presence of the women who together built one of Vienna’s most progressive and quietly influential spaces.