Unknown Klimt discovered in Dutch house

© 2011 AFP

"A previously unknown painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt has been discovered in a private home in the Netherlands, Austria's Standard newspaper reported.

The 90 centimetre (35 inches) by 90 centimetre work was assessed by Alfred Weidinger, deputy director of Austria's Belvedere museum, which holds the world's largest Klimt collection, Standard said its Saturday edition.
The landscape, called "Seeufer mit Birken" (lakeside with birch trees) was painted in 1901. The Dutch owner told the paper that his ancestors bought the work at an exhibition in the western German town Duesseldorf in 1902.
Klimt (1862-1918) was a symbolist painter who also gained prominence for his sketches."

Gustav Klimt was born in Baumgarten, near Vienna in Austria-Hungary. Klimt became one of the founding members and president of the Wiener Sezession (Vienna Secession) in 1897 and of the group's periodical Ver Sacrum ("Sacred Spring"). He remained with the Secession until 1908. The group's goals were to provide exhibitions for unconventional young artists, to bring the best foreign artists' works to Vienna, and to publish its own magazine to showcase members' work. Klimt's 'Golden Phase' was marked by positive critical reaction and success. Many of his paintings from this period used gold leaf; the prominent use of gold can first be traced back to Pallas Athene (1898) and Judith I (1901), although the works most popularly associated with this period are the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I(1907) and The Kiss (1907–1908).