In the manner of Gustav Klimt
Austrian, 1862–1918
The Nurse, 2026
Oil and gold leaf on canvas
150 × 120 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.11.5
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A nurse sits at the end of a night shift, head propped on her hand, stethoscope still round her neck, her face tender and wrecked. Her scrubs have become a chequerboard of gold and teal, as though the hospital had issued her an icon's robe. A pale figure watches over her shoulder. Klimt gilded the rich women of Vienna. This is who he should have been gilding.
The brief
A nurse in scrubs seated after a night shift, face exhausted and tender, her uniform a flat field of gold and teal geometric pattern. Viennese Secession painting with gold leaf, figures whose faces and hands are rendered softly and realistically while their bodies dissolve into flat fields of ornamental pattern, spirals, squares and eyes in gold, black and jewel tones, mosaic-like decorative surfaces, elongated composition, shimmering metallic leaf against matte paint. Museum photograph of the painting with gold leaf catching light, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
