What the painting shows

Water Serpents II by Klimt is an oil on canvas painting begun in 1904 and completed in either 1906 or 1907. Klimt depicts four water nymphs reclining together across a horizontal canvas measuring 80 by 145 centimeters. The artwork belongs to an undisclosed private collection after changing hands several times following its recovery after World War II.

When you look at the canvas, your eye lands on the two central figures stretched across the lower and middle zones. A blonde woman lies on her side in the foreground, turning toward you with heavy eyelids, flushed cheeks, and slightly parted lips. Her hand rests near a spray of pink and white flowers, while pale skin glows with delicate bluish and yellow-reddish shadows. Klimt renders her form with direct sensuality, leaving her pubic hair visible as she casts an assertive gaze across the composition.

Directly behind the reclining blonde nymph lies a second woman with reddish-brown hair, seen from behind in full nudity. Her back and hip curve upward in a sweeping line that echoes the horizontal motion of water. Soft light plays along her spine, contrasting with the dark green and patterned currents underneath her body. Her auburn hair ripples down her shoulders as she drifts with closed eyes beside decorative ribbons and blossoms.

Two additional female heads occupy the upper right corner, their bodies partially obscured by the primary figures. One is a blonde woman with closed eyes resting against a band of warm color, while beside her a dark-haired woman gazes forward with a calm expression. Both faces display flushed cheeks and soft modeling as they emerge from dark currents studded with geometric shapes. By grouping these four figures together in close contact, Klimt evokes an atmosphere of shared intimacy and sensory bliss.

The background presents a flattened field of decorative ornament characteristic of Klimt’s gold period. Swirling ribbons of salmon pink, red, and olive green snake through the composition like drifting algae or water serpents. Golden vines with spiral tendrils weave between the women, framing their torsos alongside stylized circular flowers in blue, lavender, and white. Small spotted fish swim among the decorative currents, adding subtle figurative accents to the dense patterns.

Water Serpents II, also known as Wasserschlangen II or Girlfriends, concludes a sequence of water nymph pictures Klimt produced between 1898 and 1907. This group includes Moving Water from 1898, Medicine from 1901, Goldfish from 1902, and Water Serpents I from 1904. In these symbolic allegories, Klimt used aquatic settings to investigate sensual female forms that challenged conservative Viennese sensibilities. The mythological subject of water nymphs gave the painter artistic cover to portray female sensuality and same-sex relationships.

Art historians propose two complementary readings of the composition. On one level, the painting functions as an unproblematic representation of mythical water nymphs, an established motif in European art. On another level, scholars interpret the scene as a depiction of female erotic intimacy disguised under mythological convention to bypass social taboos. The confident gaze of the foreground nymph recalls Édouard Manet’s Olympia, while anticipating Klimt’s 1917 painting Women Friends, which treated lesbian relationships more openly.

The story behind it

The painting owes its creation to Jenny Steiner, the daughter of a Viennese industrialist. Steiner was an active supporter of modern Viennese painters and commissioned the work directly from Klimt during the mid-1900s. She kept the canvas in her Vienna home for three decades as a centerpiece of her collection. Her ownership ended abruptly in 1938 when Nazi Germany annexed Austria.

Because Jenny Steiner was Jewish, the Nazi takeover placed her life in grave danger. She fled Vienna, escaping through Europe to Portugal to survive the persecution. Following her departure, Nazi authorities seized her property and confiscated Water Serpents II. The stolen canvas was scheduled for auction at the Dorotheum in Vienna on March 5, 1940, though it never reached the auction block.

Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi governor of Vienna, intervened and removed Water Serpents II from the scheduled sale. He transferred the painting to Nazi film director Gustav Ucicky. Ucicky was the son of Gustav Klimt and Maria Učická, born in 1899, and rumored to be the artist’s illegitimate child. Ucicky took the painting into his private residence, where it remained hidden from the public.

After World War II, Gustav Ucicky kept the stolen painting hanging on a wall in his Vienna apartment. Art historians and registries considered the piece lost throughout the post-war decades. When Ucicky died in 1961, the work passed to his wife, Ursula Ucicky. The canvas remained in her possession until 2012, when she negotiated a restitution agreement with Jenny Steiner’s heirs to obtain an export license through Sotheby’s.

The Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien mediated the negotiations between Ursula Ucicky and Jenny Steiner’s heirs, resulting in a settlement that split the sale proceeds equally. In 2012, Swiss art broker Yves Bouvier bought the painting, and Steiner’s heirs used their half of the proceeds to establish the New Klimt Foundation. For collectors researching the provenance of an original Klimt, such restitution agreements represent a vital legal mechanism for resolving historical wartime seizures.

In 2013, Yves Bouvier sold Water Serpents II to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. The transaction soon sparked the Bouvier Affair, a series of international lawsuits. Rybolovlev sued Bouvier, alleging that the broker concealed his own ownership interest to inflate the acquisition cost. Rybolovlev’s lawsuits were ultimately unsuccessful, but the dispute brought intense public attention to the painting’s modern history.

Where to see it

Water Serpents II is currently held in a private collection and is not on permanent view. Dmitry Rybolovlev sold the painting in 2015 to an undisclosed buyer. Art market sources report that the canvas entered the collection of an Asian buyer or a member of the Qatari royal family. The presumed 2015 buyer is Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, chair of the Qatar Museums Authority in Doha.

Public viewings of the canvas remain exceptional. Curators from the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam located the painting while preparing an exhibition on Klimt’s artistic influences. From October 2022 until February 2023, the canvas was displayed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in the exhibition Golden Boy: Gustav Klimt. This presentation allowed the public to examine its painted surface for the first time in several decades.

Beginning in February 2023, the painting was shown at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna in the exhibition Klimt. Inspired by Van Gogh, Rodin, Matisse…, marking a temporary return to Austria. The canvas holds a notable position in modern art history: as of December 2019 and March 2024, Water Serpents II ranked as the sixth most expensive painting in the world and the highest-priced work by Klimt ever sold. To explore where other works from his career reside today, consult our complete guide to Klimt paintings.