Gustav Klimt · Ver Sacrum · 1898
Fish blood
Women float between hair, fins and black waves. In a single square page, Klimt transforms the outline into a current and opens the great cycle of his aquatic creatures.
Immediate response
Is it a painting?
No, not in the strict sense. Fish blood is an illustration drawn by Gustav Klimt for the third issue of Sacrum Worm, published in March 1898 by the Viennese Secession. The Belvedere catalogs it as a work in ink of 40 × 40.3 cm.
However, its importance goes beyond the printed page. It sets a vocabulary that Klimt will develop in Moving water, Silverfish, Goldfish and both Water snakes : elongated female bodies, liquid hair, hybrid creatures and space freed from gravity.
A printed laboratory
Why Sacrum Worm change the reading
The Viennese Secession was founded in 1897 to provide artists with a freer exhibition and publication space. His magazine, Sacrum Worm - "Sacred Spring" - does not just accompany the movement: it becomes its graphic laboratory.
Number 3 of the first year, dedicated to Klimt, is square and designed as a total object. Text, margins, blanks and illustrations follow the same architecture. Fish blood must therefore be seen as a page designed to circulate, not as a reduced canvas after the fact.
The March 1898 issue
The full-page composition brings dense black and bare paper into dialogue. This contrast is suitable for printing while giving the water an abstract presence: a few curves are enough to produce movement.
To remember: modernity comes as much from what Klimt draws as from what he leaves empty. White is not a lack of decor: it is the space where the figures seem to drift.
Visual reading
Six elements that make the image float
A descending diagonal
Bodies slide from top to bottom. Their oblique orientation removes the idea of stable soil.
Eyes closed
The figures appear absorbed by an inner sensation rather than engaged in narrative action.
Common hair
The long strands unfold like algae and extend the direction of the water.
The witness fish
Its presence makes the aquatic environment readable without imposing a descriptive underwater landscape.
Ambiguous fins
Animal and human forms touch each other. Klimt does not specify where the woman ends and the creature begins.
The square frame
The wave turns in the page instead of leading towards a horizon. Reading becomes circular.
A deliberately strange title
What does "Fish Blood" mean?
The German title Fischblut literally means "fish blood". However, the image shows neither wound nor red liquid. The title therefore shifts the reading towards a supposed quality of these beings: a cold, floating life, foreign to the earthly world.
It would be risky to lock this formula into a single allegory. Klimt does not provide a narrative legend. The title rather associates the sensuality of bodies with an imaginary physiology: women who share the environment, the movement and perhaps the "blood" of fish.
What the title doesn't say
He does not name a precise mermaid, nor a mythological episode, nor a literary character. This absence of identity is part of symbolist effectiveness: figures are states, sensations and rhythms before being heroines.
Outline, repetition, emptiness
Wave line becomes water itself
Water without blue
Klimt does not need to paint transparency or reflections. Beams of parallel curves give the direction of the current. The aquatic environment is produced by drawing.
Bodies follow these curves and then interrupt them. The white skin thus becomes a luminous pause in the middle of the black network.
A body without gravity
The contours avoid dry angles. Shoulder, back, hip, hair and fin move from one curve to another, so that the anatomy seems subject to the same rhythm as water.
This fusion announces a central principle in Klimt: the body is not placed in front of the decor; he is absorbed by him.
The line does not only surround the figure: it puts it into circulation.Principle of reading Fish Blood
Black, white and arabesque
Why think of Aubrey Beardsley?
A graphic relationship, not a copy
Albertina brings together black and white effects, sensual contours, long hair and waves Fish blood from Beardsley's graphic language. The parallel is convincing because the two artists transform the silhouette into ornament.
But Klimt moves this vocabulary to water. Where Beardsley often organizes the page like a theatrical scene, Klimt dissolves the scene in a direct current.
An invention destined to grow
Of Fish blood to great aquatic works
The 1898 illustration is not an isolated episode. It inaugurates a family of images where floating women move from black and white to color, then gold, biomorphic patterns and monumental horizontal compositions.
Fish blood condenses the pattern into a square page.
Moving water almost immediately transposes the nymphs into the painting.
Silverfish and Goldfish accentuate eroticism and brilliance.
The Water snakes make the aquatic environment a total decorative world.
Comparison in images
Two Water snakes, two solutions
From the line to the material
When the fish becomes color and provocation
In Fish blood', the animal is mainly used to identify the environment and to blur the boundary between species. In Goldfish, it becomes a chromatic mass that rivals bodies.
This development shows that the aquatic pattern is not just a theme. It allows Klimt to successively test black and white, colored paint, metallic effects and decorative surface.
Same question
How can we represent a body when space no longer has a stable ground, horizon or perspective? Klimt responds with rhythm: repetition, curve, hair, scale and gaze.
Comparison benchmarks
What changes from one work to another
| Work | Date | Support/effect | Place of figures | Role of fish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fish blood | 1898 | Ink and print, black and white | Diagonal body, almost weightless | Middle sign and hybridization |
| Moving water | 1898 | Colorful paint, wave beams | Nymphs carried away by a broad current | Secondary presence |
| Silverfish | around 1899 | Dark vertical, metallic shards | Figures compressed in depth | Bioluminescence and strangeness |
| Goldfish | 1901 - 1902 | Bright colors, gold and frontality | More provocative nudes | Central decorative mass |
| Water Snakes I | 1904 - 1907 | Precious scroll, biomorphic patterns | Two figures close together | Creature and depth |
| Water Snakes II | 1904 - 1907 | Large horizontal frieze | Intertwined body and hair | Middle become total decor |
Symbolism without a closed narrative
Aquatic women, desire and the inner world
At the end of the 19th centurye century, mermaids, nymphs, Mélusine and Ophélie offer symbolist artists female figures associated with water, sleep, desire and danger. Klimt knows this repertoire, but Fish blood does not illustrate any identifiable narrative.
Women seem passive because they close their eyes and let themselves be carried away. However, the entire composition depends on their bodies: they are the ones who direct the current. Their sensuality is therefore not reduced to a pose offered to the eye; it constitutes the very structure of the page.
A careful read
It is legitimate to speak of eroticism, hybridization and the aquatic unconscious. It is less so to attribute to each woman a precise mythological identity. The work works precisely because it remains between woman, mermaid, dream and graphic sign.
See the context in Vienna
The Secession before the museum
The Secession building gives architectural form to the rupture of 1897. Its dome of golden leaves and its motto - "In each era its art, in art its freedom" - allow us to understand the collective ambition in which the review.
Fish blood being a published work on paper, its theatrical presence is not permanent. Before a trip, always consult the basics of Belvedere and Albertina as well as the Secession program.
- See the Beethoven building and frieze at the Secession.
- View Klimt's works at Belvedere.
- Explore drawings and studies at Albertina.
- Search for scanned numbers of Sacrum Worm.
Extend the aquatic universe
Klimt reproductions available in the store
There is no product sheet dedicated to yet Fish blood. Here are the works actually present in the store which extend its vocabulary of floating women, fish and undulating lines.
Frequently asked questions
Understand Fish blood
Who created Fish Blood?
Gustav Klimt drew Fischblut, translated into French by Fish blood.
When did the work date?
It dates from 1898, the year the Viennese Secession building opened.
Is fish blood a painting?
No. It's an ink illustration designed for publication in the journal Sacrum Worm.
In which issue of Ver Sacrum does it appear?
In issue 3 of the first year, published in March 1898 and dedicated to Gustav Klimt.
What are its dimensions?
The Belvedere instructions relayed by Google Arts & Culture indicate 40 × 40.3 cm.
Why is the title about blood?
The image does not show any injury. The title rather associates the figures with an aquatic or "cold-blooded" nature, without imposing a single explanation.
Are the women depicted mermaids?
They look like nymphs or mermaids, but Klimt does not give them a precise mythological identity.
Why do bodies seem to float?
They are placed diagonally, without ground or horizon, and their contours follow the parallel curves of the current.
What is the connection with Moving Water?
Moving water, painted a few months later in 1898, features stretched figures and large waves of lines.
What does this have to do with Water Snakes?
Both versions develop at the beginning of the XXe century the same universe of aquatic women, hybrid bodies and biomorphic decoration.
Can we see the original all the time?
Works on paper are fragile and rarely exhibited continuously. You must check the programs and collection bases before traveling.
Is there a reproduction in the store?
No sheet dedicated to Fish blood at the time of this check. The store offers on the other hand Moving water, Silverfish, Goldfish and Water Snakes II.
Sources and credits
To go further
Institutional sources: Belvedere - notice of Fischblut ; Albertina - Klimt's illustrations for Sacrum Worm ; Belvedere - Water Snakes I and aquatic genealogy.
Image credits: works by Gustav Klimt and illustration by Aubrey Beardsley in the public domain, Wikimedia Commons files. Photo of the Secession: Wikimedia Commons, "Secession Building Vienna" file, used under its license. Product images come from the Alpha Reproduction catalog.
Editorial note: french titles vary depending on the catalog. German titles are retained when it helps to precisely identify the work.
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