Gustav Klimt:
Seated Female Nude in Turned Position (Sitzender weiblicher Akt in Drehhaltung), c. 1907
Blue crayon on Japanese paper
55.9 × 36.9 cm
©Leopold Museum, Vienna
(Strobl s1627)

Around 1907 Klimt produced a concentrated series of nude and semi‑nude studies that Strobl later grouped by pose and handling. This sheet belongs to that cluster and shows him working with blue crayon on thin Japanese paper, a material he used frequently at the time. The paper’s smooth, lightly absorbent surface allowed him to draw steady contours. Klimt keeps the interior forms open, and limiting the crayon to outline, hair and the light indication of drapery near the hip and leg.

The model sits with the right leg raised and the left leg extended diagonally, a simple asymmetry that Klimt often used to test how a figure could be anchored on the page without shading or background elements. The head faces forward rather than sideways, and the hair is outlined more firmly than in several related sheets. The composition is organised along a diagonal, with the raised knee as the highest point and the torso following that line. The drawing contains no corrections or repeated contours, suggesting that the pose was already familiar and that the sheet functioned as a direct registration rather than a preparatory study for a specific painting.

Within the broader group of drawings from 1907 this work is relatively reduced in means. Some related sheets show small adjustments to shoulders or hands; here Klimt maintains a clear, uninterrupted structure despite the minor breaks in the contour. The absence of colour accents is consistent with a phase in which he separated his drawing practice from the decorative vocabulary of his paintings. While he was working on major projects such as the Stoclet Frieze, the drawings formed an autonomous body of work focused on proportion, balance and the physical presence of the model. This sheet reflects that approach: blue crayon, Japanese paper, and a figure occupying the page without narrative or symbolic additions.