Hope II

[1][2] It was the second of Klimt's works to focus on a pregnant woman, both depicting Herma, one of his favourite models.

She has long brown hair and closed eyes, bowing her head towards her bare breasts and burgeoning abdomen.

The woman's clothing, decorated with gold leaf like a Byzantine artwork and richly coloured and patterned, but flat like an Orthodox icon, contrasts with the delicately painted and contoured human faces and bare flesh, and also with the darker tones of the background.

Due to the scandalous nudity of its central figure, Hope I was not exhibited until the second Vienna Kunstschau the following year.

The painting was acquired by Eugenie Primavesi [de] before December 1914, and it was sold in the late 1930s by the Neue Galerie of Otto Kallir or his successor Vita Künstler.