After the Rain

An orchard after a shower

Gustav Klimt's After the Rain (Nach dem Regen) depicts an orchard with chickens. The Belvedere's signed 1898 oil measures 80 × 40 centimetres, inventory 374. Its setting is Sankt Agatha near Lake Hallstatt. ^[1]

The scene rewards looking from the ground upward. Pale birds interrupt the darker grass, upright trunks carry the eye into the foliage, and small openings admit a cooler light beyond. Nothing spectacular happens. The interest lies in the way an ordinary orchard becomes an intricate arrangement of intervals, overlaps and changes of scale. Klimt gives the empty spaces between birds almost as much importance as the birds themselves.

The narrow shape of the painting

At twice as high as it is wide, the canvas offers a restricted slice of the orchard. A landscape often promises room to look sideways, but this view continually returns attention to an upward passage through grass, animals, branches and leaves. The nearest chickens occupy enough space to register as individual bodies. Farther up, the birds become small flashes among the trunks.

The cropping makes the scene feel larger than the portion shown. Trees continue beyond the upper edge, and birds at the sides imply activity outside the frame. There is no central path leading neatly to a destination. Instead, the viewer works through several possible routes, looking past one tree, around another and into a lighter opening in the upper distance.

The most substantial trunks are off centre. Their uneven spacing prevents the orchard from forming a rigid colonnade. A slimmer upright in the foreground complicates the relationship between the larger trees: a small mark can indicate something close, while a broad dark mass may stand farther away. Scale alone does not explain every position. Overlap and the surrounding patches of grass have to be read together.

This is an intimate encounter with a cultivated place rather than a commanding panorama. The eye travels slowly because foliage repeatedly interrupts its progress. The narrowness becomes a practical part of that experience, allowing the viewer to enter the orchard without taking possession of an entire landscape at once.

Chickens and the scale of the meadow

The chickens supply the clearest points of movement. Some bend towards the ground, while others hold their heads up or turn across the field. Their pale bodies catch attention against the green, but darker birds are harder to separate from their surroundings. The result is an irregular rhythm of discovery: one animal announces itself immediately, another appears only after a second look.

In the foreground, rounded white forms are broken by darker heads, wings and tails. These are economical descriptions, sufficient to make the birds legible without giving each a sharp outline. Their different orientations keep the flock from becoming a decorative row. They seem occupied with the ground rather than arranged for the viewer.

Small touches elsewhere can initially be mistaken for more birds. Flowers and scattered highlights share some of the same light values. Looking becomes a matter of distinguishing a body from a blossom, a head from a dark patch, or a bird's tail from a stroke of grass. That slight uncertainty helps the animals belong to the meadow instead of appearing pasted onto it.

The Belvedere's account emphasises the retreating fruit trees as a cue to depth. Its interpretation also draws attention to the hazy grey-green colour connecting near and distant areas. ^[2] In visual terms, these two effects pull in different directions. The changing sizes take the eye back through space; the continuous colour keeps bringing it to the painted surface.

Light and colour after rain

The lower part of the image contains many small, warm accents, while violet and blue-grey notes become more noticeable above. Dark foliage frames lighter gaps. The light is dispersed rather than concentrated in a single sunbeam. It does not divide the orchard into one clearly illuminated half and one shadowed half.

That distribution matters to the title. The viewer sees a landscape described through softened light, rather than a storm shown in action. There is no need to imagine a dramatic event beyond the frame to understand the picture. The title directs attention to a temporary condition of seeing: familiar trees and grass appear changed by the atmosphere surrounding them.

The painting can feel quiet without requiring a fixed emotional meaning. The chickens remain busy, and the brighter ground offers small points of liveliness. Its darker passages do not compel an interpretation of sadness. Nor do the light openings automatically turn it into an emblem of renewal. The changing visibility of ordinary things is already a substantial subject.

Softness should also be distinguished from an absence of structure. Even where the foliage merges into dark masses, the trunks retain their separate directions. Small gaps remain carefully placed. The painting can appear misty as a whole while still depending on precise divisions between one tree, the next tree and the space between them.

Sankt Agatha before the Attersee landscapes

Klimt stayed with the Flöge family in Sankt Agatha in 1898. The Klimt Foundation places this picture among a small group of early landscapes associated with that stay, before the Attersee became his principal summer landscape setting. ^[3] The Hallstatt location is therefore central to the painting's identity; it should not be absorbed into a general label for Klimt's lake-country work.

The narrow format also distinguishes it from the square compositions familiar from his later landscapes. Here, the relationship between height and depth governs the experience. There is little room for a broad horizon or an expansive sky. The trees and animals carry the recession almost entirely within the orchard itself.

The current 1898 dating supersedes the older catalogue date of 1899 recorded in the Belvedere's bibliography. Both dates concern this canvas. ^[1]

The chickens hidden beneath the surface

Technical examination adds an unexpected dimension to this apparently fleeting impression. The Belvedere's 2025 Pigment & Pixel education booklet explains that underdrawing and X-radiography reveal revisions, including two chickens painted over in the final composition. ^[4] The visible flock therefore represents a choice made during the work's development.

Conservator Stefanie Jahn identifies infrared underdrawing, flat-brush strokes and dabs, and oil-resin paint over the covered birds. ^[1] These findings explain why looseness at the surface can coexist with deliberate preparation. The chickens were not simply accidental pale marks that happened to resemble animals.

Removing a bird changes more than the number of bodies. It opens a patch of grass, alters the spacing between neighbouring forms and affects the balance of light and dark. In a composition with so many small accents, an apparently minor revision can change the movement of the eye. The covered birds make that possibility concrete, even though Klimt's exact reasons for each alteration remain unrecorded.

The examinations also give different kinds of information. An underlying drawn outline concerns preparation; an X-ray image of a painted form concerns paint beneath the visible surface. Neither is a second surviving artwork. Together they allow the finished orchard to be understood as something adjusted through painting, rather than a single unaltered transcription of a passing moment.

Its pastel-like appearance is equally distinct from its material. The work is an oil painting. Soft edges, subdued colour and small touches create the effect; describing that effect as a separate pastel medium would confuse appearance with substance.

A landscape purchased by the state

Exhibited at the seventh Vienna Secession in 1900, it became the first Klimt painting bought by the state: the Ministry of Education paid 1,000 crowns. It was shown in the new Moderne Galerie in 1903. ^[1]

That reception sits alongside another event at the same exhibition. Klimt's Philosophy provoked a major controversy, while his landscapes attracted buyers. The Klimt Foundation uses this contrast to show that the opposition to one part of his work did not amount to a universal rejection of the artist. ^[3] The orchard's institutional history gives a more varied picture of his public standing.

It is also significant that this was a modest rural subject. The painting's museum life did not begin because it illustrated a public ceremony, portrayed a prominent patron or fulfilled a grand decorative commission. A narrow meadow with feeding chickens was sufficient to become a work selected for a developing public collection.

Permission to copy the painting

In October 1906 Elizabeth Watkins requested permission to copy it; Klimt agreed in writing, according to the museum's archival account. ^[1] The episode supplies a small but revealing sequel to the state purchase: the painting had become an accessible object of sustained study.

Copying such a work would involve more than tracing recognisable trees and birds. A copyist would have to decide how to reproduce the transitions between dark foliage and lighter openings, and how much definition to give a chicken before it became too detached from the grass. The apparent simplicity of the subject conceals difficult relationships between marks.

The request also shifts attention from Klimt making the orchard to another person looking carefully at his finished painting. The same arrangement that once required revisions could now be examined through someone else's attempt to paint it. The document does not tell us what Watkins ultimately produced, but it records the work's capacity to invite that kind of attention.

Where to see After the Rain

The Belvedere owns After the Rain but listed it as not on display when checked on 23 October 2026. Confirm its availability before visiting. ^[1]

In reproduction, it is worth viewing the whole tall rectangle before enlarging individual birds. A close detail can clarify a brushstroke, but it loses the long interval between the nearest animals and the distant foliage. The painting's particular achievement depends on that interval: a small field of ordinary activity becomes a sustained journey through the orchard.

References

1. Belvedere, After the Rain, collection object 6087, inventory 374; object data, Franz Smola's essay, Monika Mayer and Franz Smola's provenance notes, and Stefanie Jahn's conservation account (essays in German). Accessed 23 October 2026. View source.
2. Belvedere, After the Rain, holder-supplied image and interpretation, Google Arts & Culture. Accessed 23 October 2026. View source.
3. Klimt Foundation, Cradle of Modernism, sections on the first landscapes and the seventh Vienna Secession exhibition, Gustav Klimt Database. Accessed 23 October 2026. View source.
4. Belvedere, Gustav Klimt – Pigment & Pixel, education booklet, 2025, PDF page 5, focus on Nach dem Regen (in German). Accessed 23 October 2026. View source.