Birch Trees

by Gustav Klimt Other

Painted in 1903, Birch Forest is filled with the stillness and mystery that make Klimt's landscape paintings so absorbing. This strange and isolated slice of nature leaves the viewer immersed in a world in which there is no sky, no hint of daylight in the upper sections; instead, there is an affecting sense of near-suffocation in the completeness of the surrounding trees, in the dense wall of wood that confronts us. As in almost all of Klimt's landscapes, Birch Forest is marked by the strange and complete absence of people and animals, removing any sense of movement or of time passing. The clock appears to have stopped entirely, nature has paused eerily, allowing us to glimpse the woodland in the spiritual fullness to which the artist himself was witness.