Gustav Klimt - Apple Tree Cushion

Apple Tree I, painted around 1912 in oil on canvas by Austrian Symbolist Gustav Klimt. A small fruit tree fills the square composition, its crown scattered with red apples and set against a dense meadow of flowers and foliage. Klimt builds the scene from short, thick touches of colour so that branches, fruit and ground form an almost continuous decorative surface. The shallow space and lack of a conventional horizon make the landscape read less as a view into nature than as a richly woven field of colour. The painting belongs to the late phase in which Klimt loosened the precise ornament of his Golden Period and pursued a freer, more painterly approach to landscape. It was first shown at the Great Dresden Art Exhibition in 1912.