Birch forest
Silver trunks, incandescent ground and no sky: Klimt transforms an undergrowth of the Attersee into a wall of color, silent and almost abstract.
A forest without horizons
Birch forest shows a fragment of undergrowth painted during the summer of 1903 near Litzlberg, on the Attersee. Klimt removes the sky, raises the ground and cuts the trees before their tops. The trunks become a series of light verticals while the dead leaves form a red, copper, yellow and green carpet.
The subject remains natural, but the organization is decorative: repetition, rhythm, density, contrast of textures. The depth still exists thanks to the trunks which shrink towards the bottom, yet it is constantly folded towards the surface of the square.
Four decisions that change the forest
Klimt doesn't just copy trees. He chooses a piece of reality narrow enough for the natural pattern to become a construction.
Cut the tops
The gaze never rises towards the foliage. The trunks cross the canvas like columns without beginning or end.
Remove the sky
Without a bright opening at the top, the wood becomes a continuous enclosure and the viewer finds themselves inside the pattern.
Raise the ground
The carpet of leaves occupies most of the square. It reads both as sloping ground and as a vertical surface.
Create a rhythm
White, gray, brown, white: the trunks impose a regular measurement that the colored touches disturb.
From silver gray to copper
The fundamental contrast opposes two families of shapes. The trunks are long, continuous and relatively cold. The ground, on the contrary, is fragmented into hundreds of small warm touches. The canvas holds together thanks to this tension between line and colored dust.
The nearest trees are large and individualized by their bark. Further on, they thin and multiply. Klimt therefore retains depth indices, but their regularity simultaneously produces a grid effect.
Two small blue plants in the foreground interrupt the autumn agreement. They prove that light penetrates the wood without any rays, cast shadows or pieces of sky being directly shown.
Look at the material, not just the pattern
These reading frames isolate the three essential mechanisms. The complete work remains visible just above; the details are only used to understand its construction.
The bark
The small dark bars on a light background make the birch recognize, but their repetition also creates graphic writing.
The carpet of leaves
Rust, orange, brown, yellow and green are laid in fragments. The ground becomes a mosaic that competes with the trunks.
The tight bottom
The thinner trunks indicate the distance, but their density closes off any escape. We move forward without ever leaving the woods.
What Klimt keeps - and what he takes away
Photography allows us to recognize natural data: pale bark, repeated verticals, leaves on the ground, gradual reduction of trees. But Klimt removes directional light, shadows and especially the gap in the sky.
It also brings the plans together. In nature, air separates the trees; in the painting, the keys fill almost every interval. The undergrowth is no longer a passage: it is a frontal presence.
Bark, vertical and dead leaves
Why does the canvas look modern?
Because she never completely chooses between natural space and decorative surface. Both readings remain active at the same time.
The square format stabilizes
Almost devoid of dominant direction, the square slows down the story and encourages an overall reading. Neither side seems to promise an exit.
Pointillism is diverted
Klimt knows neo-impressionist research, but he does not methodically apply a scientific theory of complements. The little touch is mainly used to densify the texture.
The human figure disappears
No walker, no animal, no path explains the scale. Freed from the anecdote, the forest becomes the only subject.
The viewfinder isolates
In a 1903 letter, Klimt explains that he searches for his motifs through an opening cut out of cardboard. The device transforms the landscape into composable fragments.
Verticals are architecture
The trunks function as a colonnade, but a colonnade without a building. The structure arises from nature itself.
The touch makes the floor tactile
The network of spots does not describe leaf after leaf. It suggests their accumulation, their cracking and the density of the undergrowth.
From the dark forest to the leaf tapestry
Between 1901 and 1904, Klimt used the undergrowth near Litzlberg as a laboratory. Trunks remain vertical, but soil, light and density change.
Birch forest
The silver trunks and copper soil achieve a balance between observation, rhythm and quasi-abstraction.
Fir forest I
The depth is even more opaque: the dark trunks form an almost continuous barrier.
Beech forest
The touches of the ground gain importance while the barrels maintain a vertical frame.
Shore with birches
Trunks no longer close just a wood: they filter a surface of water and articulate two planes.
Wooded slope in Unterach
More than a decade later, the trunks are absorbed into an even denser chromatic network. The forest becomes almost entirely surface.
| Work | Dominant | Depth | Main effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fir forest I | Deep greens and browns | Very closed | Silence, density, green wall |
| Beech forest | Rust, green, gray | Heavily raised ground | Transition to surface style |
| Birch forest | Silver, copper, gold | Compressed but readable | Balance between grid and nature |
| Shore with birches | Blues and greens | Open by water | Curtain of trees in front of the lake |
| Wooded slope in Unterach | Greens, pinks and grays | Almost dissolved | Late colored network |
Paint early, in the woods
During his summer stays with the Flöge family, Klimt left the social life of Vienna to work around the Attersee. In August 1903, he wrote that he got up around six o'clock and went to the nearby forest when the weather permitted.
The exact location of Birch forest not documented by a working photograph. However, research linked it to the woods near the Bräuhof in Litzlberg, where Klimt stayed until 1907. He began several open-air landscapes and was then able to complete them in his Viennese studio.
This morning discipline nuances the image of the improvising decorator of the arabesques. The canvas is based on slow observation: differences in bark, interval between trunks, reduction in their width and variation in spots on the ground.
From Klimt to Bloch-Bauer, then to the international market
The provenance of the painting is inseparable from the history of Nazi dispossession in Austria. It must be told with dates, without confusing legal restitution and simple change of collection.
Creation and first personal exhibition
Klimt painted the work during the summer, then presented it at the exhibition dedicated to him by the Viennese Secession in November-December.
Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer Collection
The couple acquired the painting from the artist. It joins a major ensemble also including Adele's two portraits and several landscapes.
Seizure after the Anschluss
The Viennese magistrate seizes the work in the context of the persecution and dispossession of the Bloch-Bauer family.
Entry into public collections
The painting passed through the municipal collection of Vienna in 1942, then was transferred to the Osterreichische Galerie in 1948.
Restitution
The Republic of Austria returns Birch forest to the heirs of Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.
Sale at Christie's
The painting was sold in New York and later joined the collection of Paul G. Allen.
$104.585 million
At the sale of the Paul G. Allen collection, the work reached $104,585,000, setting an auction record for Klimt. It remains in a private collection.
Why does the title vary?
Sources and catalogs do not always use the same title. Christie's uses Birch Forest, while documents from Belvedere indicate Beech Forest/Birch Forest. The Klimt database links the work to the group of forest views and also mentions the German equivalents.
This variation does not mean that there is complete doubt about the image. It reflects the history of cataloging, translations and the fact that descriptive landscape titles may have been standardized differently. In French, Birch forest is the clearest title for the work with pale streaked trunks.
From silver birch to deep forests
The links below lead directly to the store's verified works and collections.
Birch forest
The contrast between silver trunks and copper leaves.
Fir forest I
A deep grid of greens and browns.
Beech forest
The colored soil begins to spread over the entire surface.
Shore with birches
A curtain of trunks in front of the calm water.
Wooded slope in Unterach
The trunks dissolve in a chromatic network.
Attersee
The lake transformed into a turquoise surface.
Kammer Park
Layered foliage, trunks and lake.
Around Klimt, Attersee and the landscape
Understand everything about Birch forest
When did Gustav Klimt paint Birch Forest?
In 1903, during his period of summer stays in Litzlberg, on the banks of the Attersee in Upper Austria.
Where's the painting today?
It belongs to a private collection. It can be loaned occasionally to exhibitions, but it is not permanently visible in a museum.
What are the dimensions of the work?
The canvas measures 110.1 × 109.8 cm. It is therefore almost perfectly square, like many of Klimt's important landscapes.
Why can't we see the sky?
Klimt chooses a tight framing that cuts the peaks and eliminates the horizon. The forest thus appears denser and the composition approaches a decorative surface.
Was Klimt a pointillist?
He is interested in the small touches of neo-impressionism, but does not strictly follow the scientific method of Seurat or Signac. In this canvas, the keys mainly construct the texture of the soil.
Why does the title vary between birch and beech?
Catalogs, translations and provenance files used several formulations, in particular Birch Forest and Beech Forest/Birch Forest. In French, Birch forest is the commonly used title.
What's the restitution story?
Acquired by Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, the painting was seized after the Anschluss in 1938, then entered the Austrian public collections, then returned to the heirs in March 2006.
How much was the painting sold in 2022?
$104,585,000 at Christie's New York on November 9, 2022, during the sale of the Paul G. Allen collection.
Where to find other Klimt forests?
The collection Forests by Gustav Klimt brings together fir trees, beeches, birches and the wooded slopes of the Attersee.
To go further
Birch Forest - instructions and provenance
Dimensions, creation, exhibitions, Bloch-Bauer collection, restitution and sale of 2022.
BelvedereSearch for provenance
Official list of works returned to the heirs of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer in 2006.
Gustav Klimt DatabaseThe Bloch-Bauer Collection
Composition of the family collection and place of the forest among the landscapes of Klimt.
Gustav Klimt DatabaseTrees and forest views
The group of five undergrowth created around Litzlberg between 1901 and 1904.
Klimt FoundationSummer stays on the Attersee
Litzlberg, Kammer and Weissenbach as places of rest and creation from 1900 to 1916.
Klimt FoundationFloral Worlds
From the first realistic forest views to modern framing of the landscapes of the Attersee.
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Birch forest in autumn
Photography by Valery Kraynov, CC BY 3.0 license.
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Birch bark
Photography by MrPanyGoff, CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
Wikimedia Commons
Rhythm of the trunks
Photograph by Totila123, CC0 license.
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