Expectation from the Stoclet Frieze

Buy Art Prints Now
from Amazon

* As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

About Expectation from the Stoclet Frieze

She appears ready to move, yet movement never comes. One foot advances beneath a narrowing skirt. Her torso faces outward while her head turns into a severe profile. Bent arms rise across her body, and long fingers meet in a gesture too deliberate to be casual. The pose belongs to a dancer; the stillness belongs to a monument.

This solitary figure is usually titled Expectation. The MAK also identifies her as the Dancer, while some accounts translate the German Erwartung as Anticipation. Gustav Klimt designed her for one long wall of the dining room at Palais Stoclet in Brussels. Across the room, the embracing pair called Fulfilment occupies a corresponding place. Between and around them spreads the golden Tree of Life.^[1][2]

Two original forms must be distinguished. At the MAK in Vienna is Klimt's full-scale mixed-media working drawing, part 2 of the surviving nine-section set made in 1910–11. In Brussels is the executed mosaic, fabricated after his design by Leopold Forstner's Wiener Mosaikwerkstätte and collaborating specialists. The paper figure reveals Klimt's drawing, applied metals and instructions; the dining-room figure belongs to marble, mosaic, enamel, glass, ceramic and metal assembled within Josef Hoffmann's architecture.^[1][3]

Klimt reached the poised final image through years of figure study. The themes later called expectation and fulfilment had begun to concern him by 1904–05, and the closest dancer studies date from 1907–08. They show him testing a stepping stance, a turned profile, raised forearms and the transformation of a moving model into an upright sign.^[4][5]

At a Glance

• Artist and designerGustav Klimt
• TitleExpectation; also described as The Dancer or Anticipation
• DateClosest preparatory studies, 1907–08; full-scale working drawing, 1910–11; mosaic fabricated and installed in 1911–12^[3][4]
• Original settingWest long wall of the main dining room at Palais Stoclet, Brussels
• Place in the ensembleThe solitary figure stands within the Tree of Life field near a rose bush and butterflies; Fulfilment faces her across the room
• PoseFrontal body, profile head, advancing foot, bent arms and emphatic hand gesture
• Working drawingMAK part 2 in the nine-section Stoclet Frieze set, mixed media on tracing paper^[1]
• Related studyAlbertina's 1907–08 pencil Dancer (Study for “Expectation”), 55.9 × 36.9 centimetres^[5]
• Executed formPlate mosaic and inlay realised by specialist Viennese workshops after Klimt's design
• Principal visual connectionEgyptian figure conventions, combined with modern dance and modern European figure art^[4]
• Essential distinctionExpectation is neither a free-standing painting nor a portrait of an identified woman. It is one figure within an architectural ensemble.

A Step Suspended

The contradiction begins at the feet. One foot extends in front of the other, establishing a stride. The long garment narrows downward and makes the advancing leg seem even more decisive. Yet the body does not lean into travel. Its vertical balance arrests the step.

Above, the torso is largely frontal. Shoulders spread across the wall, creating a stable axis. The head turns sharply to the side, producing a profile that directs attention along the frieze rather than out towards diners. Body and face therefore occupy different orientations at once.

The arms intensify the pause. Both bend upward, crossing the patterned garment. Their angular course differs from the soft branching spirals around the figure. Hands approach one another without joining in a relaxed clasp. Extended fingers form a precise, almost ceremonial sign.

The pose can be read as waiting because action has been suspended. It can also be read as attention, ritual or self-possession. The title suggests an emotional condition but does not dictate a complete story. Klimt gives expectation bodily form through imminence: something appears about to happen, and the image permanently withholds it.

Scale contributes to that effect. The woman is approximately life-sized within a monumental wall. She does not retreat into a scene. Her narrow silhouette stands upright like a column or sign, making the body part of the dining room's architecture.

Profile and Presence

Klimt makes the head small in relation to the decorated body, but its profile commands attention. Forehead, nose, lips and chin form one clean edge against the gold. The eye looks laterally, refusing direct exchange with the viewer.

Profile has a double effect. It can clarify identity through outline, as on a coin or relief, while withholding the mutual gaze expected of a portrait. Expectation is intensely present but psychologically closed. Her direction of attention lies somewhere beyond the visible section.

The dark mass of hair extends and ornaments the head. Jewellery or decorative forms near the face make it difficult to separate body from adornment. The profile remains natural enough to feel human, yet everything around it pushes towards emblem.

This combination distinguishes the figure from a living dancer captured in performance. Klimt does not describe breath, muscular strain or a fleeting facial response. He selects an attitude and gives it durability. Movement becomes readable through outline after its physical momentum has been removed.

The result resembles ancient figure conventions without simply copying them. Egyptian art frequently joins a frontal torso to a profile head and organises bodily parts for maximum legibility rather than for a single optical viewpoint. Klimt adopts that conceptual clarity, then subjects it to modern pattern, colour and material.^[4]

The Language of the Hands

The hands are among the least abstracted parts of Expectation. Bare skin and articulated fingers emerge from the garment, preserving a direct trace of the posed body. Their gesture nevertheless remains hard to name.

One forearm angles upward; the other crosses towards it. Fingers lengthen and bend with a rhythm that echoes the surrounding ornament while resisting its spirals. The gesture could suggest dance, ceremony, greeting, self-containment or alertness. None completely resolves it.

Albertina scholarship relates the final image to dancer studies in which Klimt did not pursue expansive action. Instead, he transformed movement into a front-facing body with a turned head and ritualised arms. The synthesis included Egyptian examples, modern dance and the figure art of Jan Toorop, George Minne and Ferdinand Hodler.^[4]

Those comparisons clarify method more than subject. Toorop's linear figures, Minne's introverted bodies and Hodler's monumental repetitions offered modern ways to make gesture carry psychological or symbolic weight. Klimt did not combine quotations from three specific works. He shared a wider search for simplified bodies whose stance could communicate beyond naturalistic anecdote.

The hands keep that communication open. If they illustrated one conventional sign, the figure would be easier to decode. Their ambiguity lets pose operate between observed movement and invented emblem.

A Body Remade as Pattern

Most of the woman's body is hidden by a long triangular garment. Its shape broadens around the shoulders and contracts towards the ankles, turning anatomy into geometry. The viewer understands that a body supports it, but the body cannot be reconstructed fully from what is shown.

Pattern covers this field in distinct bands and units. Triangles, rectangles, circles and eye-like ovals create several competing scales. Some marks appear like cloth ornament; others resemble jewellery, mosaic pieces or signs. The surface does not simply follow folds. It establishes its own order.

Bare shoulder, face, arms and feet provide the comparison. Skin is comparatively quiet and continuous. The garment breaks into hard-edged colour. Klimt makes embodiment depend on the tension between these zones: a small amount of exposed anatomy against a much larger fabricated surface.

The triangular silhouette can suggest a ceremonial robe, an Egyptianising costume or a column. Yet it also has a practical compositional role. Against spreading tree branches, the figure needs a compact form that remains legible across the room. The garment gathers visual noise into one decisive outline.

Pattern changes motion as well. A natural skirt might billow, fold or trail behind a step. Klimt's decorated shape feels heavy and self-contained. The advancing foot says movement; the garment converts movement into permanent design.

In the executed mosaic, this transformation becomes literal. What looks like textile is built from hard materials. Enamel, glass, ceramic, metal and tesserae create the image of clothing while making the body part of the wall.^[1][3]

The Preparatory Studies

Klimt's exploration did not begin with the decorated robe. Drawings isolate bodies before their conversion into the final patterned figure. The closest studies date to 1907–08 and concentrate on standing or stepping women, often with skirts spreading around the lower body.^[4][5]

The Albertina's Dancer (Study for “Expectation”) is a pencil drawing on paper measuring 55.9 by 36.9 centimetres. The sheet shows the economy of Klimt's mature line. Outline carries stance, clothing and direction with little modelling. It belongs specifically to the Stoclet portfolio in the museum's catalogue.^[5]

Other studies test raised arms and the relation between frontal body and profile head. A Wien Museum sheet contains two versions of a standing woman with lifted forearms, dated 1907–08 and explicitly connected with the Dancer or Expectation. It is pencil on packing paper, 55.9 by 37.1 centimetres.^[6]

These dimensions matter because the study sheets and final cartoon perform different jobs. The pencil drawings remain intimate encounters with a model's stance. The one-to-one design has to convert that stance into an architectural figure and instruct makers. Enlargement is also simplification.

Albertina research traces a broader path. A profile figure associated with Poetry in the 1902 Beethoven Frieze anticipates the contemplative turn of the head. A male figure carrying weight from 1904–05 has been considered an early thought within the Stoclet theme. Studies of readers and singers explore inward attention before dancer drawings establish the final Egyptianising pose.^[4]

The sequence should not be treated as a straight chain in which every sheet inevitably leads to Expectation. Some associations remain probable rather than certain. Its value lies in showing Klimt testing several ways to make an upright figure express an inner state.

Egyptianising Without Becoming Egyptian

The clearest historical point of reference is ancient Egyptian figure art. The combination of frontal torso, profile head, advancing foot and formalised gesture is too sustained to be accidental. Both Albertina and MAK scholarship identify the connection.^[1][4]

Klimt was not reconstructing a particular pharaonic personage. Expectation has no securely identified ancient prototype, and the modern title does not correspond to a known Egyptian scene. The pose is Egyptianising: it uses a recognisable visual convention to give a modern allegorical figure clarity, remoteness and ritual force.

The garment strengthens the association through its columnar silhouette and eye-like pattern. Yet its dense modern ornament belongs equally to Klimt's own Golden Period and to the collaborative material language of the Stoclet interior. Ancient reference and contemporary design are inseparable.

The wider frieze includes falcon or hawk forms associated by institutional catalogues with Horus, as well as eye-like flowers. These motifs make Egyptian comparison relevant to the ensemble. They do not prove that Expectation enacts a complete story about a specific goddess, priestess or rite.

That limit is important because the figure has often been described with vague ideas of the “exotic.” Such language collapses distinct histories. Identifying pose, profile, bird and eye conventions individually is more precise than imagining a general Eastern atmosphere.

Klimt's achievement lies in transformation. He uses an ancient method of representing the body to solve a modern architectural problem: how to make one woman simultaneously human, symbolic, ornamental and legible across a room.

Modern Dance and Modern Figures

The alternative title Dancer points towards contemporary performance. Vienna encountered influential dancers in the years when Klimt developed the Stoclet figure. The Klimt Database notes that Maud Allan, Ruth St. Denis and Mata Hari appeared in the city in 1906–07 and considers it likely that Klimt, a regular theatre-goer, saw some of those performances.^[7]

That possibility should not be converted into a named model. No surviving document proves that one performer posed for Expectation or that a particular dance supplied the gesture. Modern dance is best understood as part of the visual environment in which unusual hand positions, stylised steps and costume could carry new meaning.

Klimt's dancer studies are striking precisely because they suppress the spectacular movement audiences might expect. The bodies stand like statues. Identity as dance survives through the advancing foot, poised arms and expressive fingers rather than through leap or spin.^[7]

The relation to Toorop, Minne and Hodler broadens the comparison. Around 1900, many artists sought alternatives to academic narrative through simplified contours, repeated figures and emblematic stance. Expectation belongs to this modern project as much as to an archaeological revival.^[4]

The final figure therefore draws vitality from a collision. Ancient profile convention gives permanence; modern dance supplies bodily possibility; modern linear art supplies psychological concentration. Klimt arrests them together.

From Figure Drawing to Working Cartoon

The transition from study to cartoon required more than enlargement. Klimt had to place the woman within the full Tree of Life field, coordinate her scale with the rose bush and transform clothing into a material design.

A 1907–08 whiteprint at the Wien Museum shows the long composition with a transfer grid. The tree, woman and roses are already present, though overlaps reveal continuing adjustment. The grid demonstrates that Klimt was preparing to carry a developed arrangement into a larger format.^[8]

By 1910–11 the full-scale Expectation occupied one of the nine MAK working-drawing sections. Tracing paper allowed lines to be transferred and reversed. It also let Klimt combine graphite, coloured media, gouache and metals while leaving room for written instructions.^[1][9]

The paper was difficult. Wet colour caused stretching and warping, and Klimt mounted the thin sheet to canvas. Conservation found fingerprints from his attempts to press lifting paper back into wet paint. The finished figure's poise emerged from an unstable support.^[9]

The cartoon remained an original work, but it pointed beyond itself. Metallic areas approximated future shine. Notes indicated other substances. Contours needed to guide mosaic workers. Pattern became both visual invention and construction proposal.

The scale also altered the viewer's relation to the figure. A study can be surveyed from a desk. The cartoon approaches the height of a person. Hands, profile and costume become bodily presences even before translation into the dining-room wall.

The Workshop Translation

Leopold Forstner's workshop and collaborating makers turned Klimt's design into plate mosaic and inlay. The complete frieze involved marble plates, tesserae, enamel, ceramic, glass, chased metal, beads, gemstones and precious-metal effects, though the exact mixture differs by passage.^[3]

For Expectation, translation intensified the division between skin and costume. Face, arms and feet needed sufficient tonal continuity to remain bodily. The garment could break into harder units and reflective accents. Outline had to survive changes of substance.

The process was not mechanical copying. A pencil edge does not dictate the width of a metal division. A drawn oval does not determine whether the final component should be enamel, glass or ceramic. Makers interpreted Klimt's specifications within technical limits while he reviewed samples and demanded changes.^[3][9]

This collaboration explains why the working drawing and mosaic should neither be conflated nor set against one another as original and mere copy. They are different objects connected by design. The paper preserves Klimt's hand and instruction. The wall realises effects that paper could only propose.

The figure's current fame often rests on reproductions that combine qualities of both. A flat colour image may derive from the cartoon while being labelled as the mosaic, or it may digitally isolate the Brussels figure from its setting. Identifying the object restores the labour and material history behind the image.

Her Place in the Dining Room

Expectation stands on the west wall amid the tree, rose bush and butterflies. Her narrow vertical form acts as a pause within branching movement. The profile directs attention along the wall, while the advancing foot seems ready to enter its floral field.^[3]

Across the dining table, Fulfilment presents two bodies joined in an embrace. The contrast encourages an emotional reading: solitary anticipation answered by union. Yet architecture prevents the sequence from becoming a simple before-and-after story. Both states remain visible and neither replaces the other.

The room's symmetry sharpens difference. Much of the tree field was mirror-transferred for the opposite wall. Repeated spirals establish correspondence, then the changed human group becomes especially conspicuous. One figure is balanced by two.

The rose bush gives Expectation another counterpart on her own wall. Its clustered blossoms answer the garment's repeated units. Butterflies introduce possible movement around a woman whose body remains fixed. Nature seems more mobile than the dancer.

Viewpoint also changes the figure. From one seat she may be seen across furniture and tableware; from another, at an angle that increases her narrowness. Daylight and electric light alter the mosaic's reflective components. Expectation is not one stable frontal image but an encounter renewed by position and hour.

What Does Expectation Mean?

The title proposes longing directed towards something absent. Opposite lies Fulfilment, apparently supplying an answer. This pairing is historically grounded enough to guide interpretation, but it should not turn the woman into a simple illustration of romantic waiting.^[1][2]

Her posture is too self-contained for passivity. She does not plead, reach towards the couple or appear overcome by lack. The profile and hand gesture suggest concentration. Expectation may be understood as alert potential rather than helpless delay.

The Egyptianising form lends the state ceremony and distance. Modern dance lends bodily readiness. Pattern immobilises the body even as the foot advances. Meaning arises from these tensions rather than from one allegorical label.

The figure's relation to diners adds another dimension. She permanently awaits within a room used for arrivals, meals and departures. Each gathering temporarily supplies human action around her, while her own anticipated movement remains suspended.

It is possible to read the ensemble in terms of desire, union, life and renewal. It is less responsible to identify the woman as a specific mythological being or to assign every eye and triangle a universal meaning. Klimt's visual synthesis exceeds the documentary programme that survives.

The most durable interpretation stays close to what the body does. She steps and stands. She faces us and turns away. Her hands communicate and remain unreadable. Expectation is the condition produced by those unresolved actions.

Artist Up Close

The figure studies show Klimt reducing without becoming generic. A few pencil lines establish the angle of a neck, the expansion of a skirt and the bend of an arm. He does not need elaborate shading to make balance convincing.^[5][6]

In the final design, selection becomes more severe. The model's particular body is converted into a silhouette capable of surviving pattern and scale. Face, hands and feet are retained as points of human contact. Everything between them can become garment, geometry and material.

This process is sometimes described as the disappearance of the body into ornament. Expectation suggests something subtler. The body remains necessary because pattern needs its pressure. The advancing foot makes the triangular robe feel inhabited. The raised forearms make its surface tense. The profile gives direction to an otherwise frontal structure.

Klimt's control did not eliminate material uncertainty. The full-scale sheet buckled, and workshops returned samples that disappointed him. Each stage required renewed decisions. The finished stillness is the end of an active, collaborative process.

Her most compelling quality may be that this process remains visible in the result. Egyptian convention, dancer's stance, pencil contour, metallic drawing and mosaic craft do not merge into one smooth illusion. They remain distinct and tightly balanced—like the figure herself.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

Accessed August 2026.

1. MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, “9 Working Drawings of the Execution of a Mosaic Frieze for the Dining Hall of Stoclet House in Brussels,” object sequence, design/execution distinction and ensemble arrangement. View source.
2. MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, “Gustav Klimt: Expectation and Fulfillment,” exhibition scholarship on the cartoons, source traditions and Stoclet patronage. View source.
3. Gustav Klimt Database, “The Stoclet Frieze: Completion,” in Expressive Blaze of Colors, 1910–1913, wall sequence, material execution, workshop roles and current access. View source.
4. Albertina Museum, “Klimt's Studies in Connection with ‘Expectation’ in the Stoclet Frieze,” study sequence and Egyptian, modern-dance, Toorop, Minne and Hodler connections. View source.
5. Albertina Museum, “Dancer (Study for ‘Expectation’ in the Stoclet Frieze),” 1907–08, object data, material, dimensions and catalogue identity. View source.
6. Wien Museum, “Two Studies of a Standing Female Figure with Raised Forearms Facing Right,” 1907–08, object data and Stoclet connection. View source.
7. Gustav Klimt Database, Gustav Klimt at His Zenith, 1907–1909, dancer studies, Vienna performances and development of the Stoclet design. View source.
8. Wien Museum, “Whiteprint, Composition Sketch with Transfer Grid for ‘Expectation’ from the Stoclet Frieze,” 1907–08, object data and technique. View source.
9. Beate Murr, MAK, “Made by Klimt, Reloaded by the MAK: A Technological View of the Design Drawings for Palais Stoclet,” paper, transfer, material instructions and conservation evidence. View source.

More KLIMT Paintings

The Kiss

Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Death and Life

Hope II

Danae

Lady with a Fan

The Three Ages of Woman

Water Serpents I