**The National Gallery in Prague present Gustav Klimt’s *Lady with a Muff.***
*A* *major painting on loan from a private collection, on display from June 27, 2014* Place: Collection of 20th- and 21st-century International Art,VeletržníPalace
Curator: Olga Uhrová
On June 27, 2014, the National Gallery in Prague, Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art, will add to its permanent exhibition of 20th- and 21st-century International Art a painting by Austrian artist **Gustav Klimt (1862–1918)**, a key figure in the Vienna Secession. Klimt developed a distinctive style that captured the wholly original atmosphere of fin de siècle Vienna.
The female subject was central to the work of Klimt. He painted portraits of contemporary women with a mysterious, dreamy expression, but also with energy and a lust for life. The painting *Lady with a Muff* dating from 1916–1917 is one such portrait. The coquettish way in which she obscures part of her face with the fur evokes Klimt’s earlier 1909 work *Woman with Hat and Feather Boa* (Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna). However, the brightly coloured background of *Lady with a Muff* is different, emphasizing the colour and newly referencing inspiration found in Asian art. These Asian-influenced figures, reflecting Klimt’s interest as a collector of Japanese and Chinese art, may be found in other of his paintings such as *The Polecat Fur* (*Der Iltispelz;* private collection), which depicts another woman wrapped in a fur coat partly obscuring her face.
Last displayed in Viennain 1926, ***Lady with a Muff* (1916–1917)** has long been thought lost. Nevertheless, the list of Klimt’s paintings by F. Novotný and J. Dobai (Vienna 1967) and later sources refer to it as “in a private collection”. The private collector purchased *Lady with a Muff* in the late 1920s or early 1930s, and the National Gallery inPrague may once again present the painting to the public courtesy of its current owner.
