The Fable Gustav Klimt Buy Art Prints Now
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Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on August 21, 2026 / Updated on October 23, 2026
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000

About The Fable

Gustav Klimt's The Fable brings storytelling into the forest. An idealised nude woman stands in the centre with a scroll in her right hand. Around her, animals enact two stories associated with Aesop: a lion appears with mice, while a fox faces tall storks. The human figure does not take part in either episode. She seems instead to gather, observe or preserve them, turning separate animal encounters into an allegory of fable itself.[1][2]

Klimt painted the work in 1883, when he was twenty-one. Its naturalistic body, carefully described animals and balanced horizontal design belong to his academic formation, long before the gold surfaces for which he later became famous. Yet the painting already poses an interesting problem. It is both a finished oil and a model made for reproduction in Martin Gerlach's ambitious portfolio Allegorien und Embleme.[1][3]

That practical origin matters. The Fable was designed to circulate as an example for artists and craftspeople, not as a coded account of Klimt's private life. The scroll, figures and animal pairs had to communicate across painting and print. At the same time, the original canvas has a scale, surface and museum history that no printed plate can replace.

At a Glance

  • ArtistGustav Klimt
  • Wien Museum title“Fabel” (Vorlage zu: Gerlach & Schenk, Allegorien und Embleme, Nr. 75a)
  • English titleThe Fable
  • Date of the painting1883
  • Object categoryPainted original created as the model for a portfolio plate
  • MediumOil on canvas
  • Image dimensions83.5 × 116 centimetres
  • Frame dimensions100.5 × 123.5 × 5.5 centimetres
  • InscriptionLower right, “G. Klimt 1883”
  • Inventory number25001
  • Publication roleModel for plate 75a of Gerlach & Schenk's Allegorien und Embleme
  • ModelThe woman is unidentified
  • Current collectionWien Museum, Vienna
  • Current accessIn August 2026, the online collection confirmed ownership but supplied no gallery placement[1]

Which Object Is The Fable?

The original painting is Wien Museum inventory 25001. It measures 83.5 centimetres high by 116 centimetres wide and is painted in oil on canvas. Its recorded frame is 100.5 by 123.5 centimetres and 5.5 centimetres deep. At lower right, Klimt signed and dated it “G. Klimt 1883.”[1]

The museum's full German title includes Vorlage, a word that can mean a model or original design prepared for another purpose. That purpose is specified precisely: this canvas was made for number 75a of Allegorien und Embleme, published by Gerlach & Schenk. Calling it a model does not make it an unfinished sketch. The painting is a complete physical object whose design was subsequently transmitted through print.[1][2]

A separate plate survives in the Leopold Museum. It is a print on paper measuring 31 by 39 centimetres. Its record distinguishes the contributions involved: Gustav Klimt supplied the design, Martin Gerlach served as editor, and Gerlach & Schenk printed and published it. Multilingual text along the plate names the subject in French, German and English.[5]

The plate and canvas must not be merged. Paper is the support of the print, not the painting. The plate's printed signature does not replace the inscription on the oil. Likewise, its smaller dimensions describe a reproducible sheet rather than a miniature version of Klimt's canvas.

Why the Painting and Plate Have Different Dates

The signed oil is securely dated 1883. The Leopold Museum catalogues its impression of plate 75a as 1882. That apparent contradiction is best preserved rather than solved by guesswork.[1][5]

Gerlach's publication appeared in instalments during the early 1880s, and institutional dates can refer to the larger publishing venture, a particular design, an impression or the original model. The painting and the print are different objects maintained in different collections. An 1882 catalogue date attached to the plate does not justify changing the date written on the canvas, nor does it prove that the surviving impression was physically produced before Klimt completed the oil.

For the painting, 1883 is the governing date. For the Leopold plate, 1882 is the date published by its holder. This object-by-object approach respects the evidence without inventing a production sequence that the records do not establish.

A Publisher's Model Collection

Martin Gerlach invited Klimt to contribute to the first series of Allegorien und Embleme while the young artist was still completing his training at Vienna's School of Arts and Crafts. Gerlach also recruited established artists and Klimt's close collaborators Ernst Klimt and Franz Matsch.[2][3]

The portfolio's long subtitle advertised original work by prominent modern artists alongside old guild signs and new guild emblems in a Renaissance character. Its aim was practical as well as prestigious. It offered artists and craftspeople a collection of models intended to raise the quality of contemporary applied design.[3][4]

Klimt contributed Youth, The Four Times of Day, The Realms of Nature, Opera, Idyll, Fable and The Fairy-Tale. Some were developed as highly finished drawings; Fable and Idyll were painted in oil. The range shows that reproduction did not require one original medium. A publisher could derive plates from drawings or paintings, while the handmade models remained distinct works.[2][3]

This commission gave Klimt an early opportunity to be recognised independently rather than only as one member of the Künstler-Compagnie. Reviews of the publication were mixed, but his name entered discussion alongside more established contributors. The assignment joined exacting academic skill to a modern network of publishing and applied art.[2]

The Woman Who Embodies Fable

The central woman provides the composition's human axis. She stands almost frontally, with her body turning subtly enough to avoid rigid symmetry. One arm crosses or approaches the body while the other raises a scroll. Her pale form separates clearly from the darker lion and dense vegetation around her.[1][7]

The scroll is the most direct attribute. It connects the woman to writing, memory and narration without identifying one author or book. The Wien Museum's institutional interpretation describes her as embodying Fable and appearing to observe the animals' allegorical behaviour in order to record it.[7]

That wording suits the figure's unusual detachment. She does not rescue the mouse, dine with the stork or confront the fox. She stands between the episodes as if their actions were material for narration. The picture therefore represents not just two fables but the act of turning animal behaviour into human instruction.

No reliable record names the model. The figure should not be identified as a Muse, a goddess, a woman from Klimt's family or an early lover. Her nudity is part of the academic-allegorical language through which an abstract idea receives a human body. It is not evidence of a portrait or private confession.

The Lion and the Mice

At one side of the composition, a lion occupies a heavy, low position while much smaller mice appear nearby. The pairing refers to the Aesopic story usually called The Lion and the Mouse.[2]

In that fable, a powerful animal initially spares a creature too small to seem useful. The mouse later repays the mercy by freeing the lion from a trap or net. Versions differ in detail, but their structure reverses the first judgment of scale: apparent weakness can become effective agency.

Klimt does not illustrate the entire sequence. There is no need to locate every stage of capture and release. The contrast between the lion's bulk and the mice's minuteness already summons the story for viewers familiar with it. The painting compresses narrative into a recognisable relation.

The lion also anchors the woman visually. Its dark mass counters her upright pale body and keeps the broad lower field from dissolving into scattered animal incidents. The mice, by contrast, reward close attention. Their smallness is both the fable's premise and a challenge built into the act of looking.

This does not make the lion a permanent Klimt symbol of oppressive power or the mouse a personal emblem of resistance. Their meaning here comes from an identified Aesopic pairing inside a work explicitly devoted to fable.

The Fox and the Storks

The second animal group refers to The Fox and the Stork. In the familiar tale, the fox serves food in a shallow dish that a stork cannot use with its long beak. The stork later returns the invitation and serves food in a narrow-necked vessel that suits the bird but defeats the fox.[2]

The story concerns reciprocity, hospitality and the consequences of designing an encounter for only one participant. Klimt again avoids a literal sequence of two meals. Fox and stork are enough to activate the tale, while vessels and surrounding details can suggest the conditions through which each animal succeeds or fails.

The tall birds create a different rhythm from the lion's compact weight. Their legs, necks and beaks produce vertical accents around the standing woman. The fox stays nearer the ground and contributes a lateral movement. Klimt thus converts a moral pairing into formal contrasts of height, direction and bodily design.

The two fables also balance one another. The first makes unequal size deceptive; the second makes different physical capacities central. Both translate animal bodies into reflections upon human conduct, which helps explain why the personification holds a scroll rather than one fixed identifying object.

A Designed Forest Rather Than One Continuous Event

The painting offers vegetation and a distant opening, but it does not behave like an ordinary landscape observed at one instant. Woman, lion, mice, fox and storks are arranged for legibility. Their scales and positions support two stories and one personification at once.[1][2]

The broad horizontal format gives each animal group room while preserving the woman as the centre. Her upright body divides the field without splitting it completely. Curving vegetation and changes in light link one side to the other, allowing the composition to feel inhabited rather than assembled from unrelated emblems.

This combination of scene and diagram was useful for a model portfolio. A viewer could recognise the literary subject quickly, while a craftsperson could study figure placement, animal form, foliage and colour relations. Reproduction would carry the organisation even when the oil surface itself was absent.

The landscape remains subordinate. Klimt does not ask viewers to identify a precise forest, season or hour. Its function is to create a plausible realm in which the allegorical body and animal narratives can coexist.

Academic Skill before the Symbolist Turn

Institutional accounts place Klimt's first Gerlach portfolio firmly within his historicist and Neo-Classical education. The body is modelled to appear three-dimensional; animal anatomy, hair, foliage and surfaces receive patient attention; and the arrangement seeks clarity rather than deliberate ambiguity.[3][4][6]

This is not yet the Klimt of flattened golden fields, mosaic-like pattern or radically compressed late portraits. The medium is simply oil on canvas. No gold leaf, metal powder or other applied metal appears in the museum record, and none should be inferred from warm colour.[1]

Later viewers can nevertheless recognise enduring abilities. Klimt controls a complex group without losing its centre, treats different textures distinctly and makes bodily pose carry an abstract idea. What changes over his career is less the seriousness of his craft than the kind of space and uncertainty it serves.

Comparing The Fable with the later Love makes that development especially clear. Both were original models for Gerlach publications, but the 1883 work explains itself through attributes and named animal stories. In Love, painted in 1895, darkness and unexplained heads make allegory less stable. The comparison reveals change without treating The Fable as an immature attempt at Symbolism.

Were There Preparatory Drawings?

The Albertina's research group states that Klimt prepared drawings and designs for his Gerlach compositions. Numerous sheets survive across the portfolio project.[3][4]

No currently published institutional entry, however, isolates a securely identified preparatory drawing for the exact 1883 oil. That limit matters. A study for Idyll, Opera or The Fairy-Tale cannot be reassigned because it belongs to the same commission, and a general group of early figure studies does not automatically become preparation for this woman.

It would be equally misleading to claim that no study ever existed. Drawings can be lost, unidentified or held outside current online catalogues. The careful position is narrower: the painting is documented as an original model, while no exact preparatory sheet has yet been securely connected in institutional catalogues.

The absence of such a sheet does not make the canvas spontaneous. Its organised animal groups, controlled anatomy and publication purpose all imply substantial planning; they simply do not reveal a recoverable sequence of sketches or strokes.

The 1885 Künstlerhaus Exhibition

The original designs, oil sketches and watercolours created for Allegorien und Embleme were presented to the Viennese public at the Künstlerhaus from 21 June to 31 August 1885. Klimt Database research places Fable and Idyll among the project's oil paintings.[2]

This exhibition allowed viewers to encounter the handmade models behind a work designed for multiplication. The context differs from a portfolio page examined at home: scale, oil colour and the physical presence of the canvas became visible before the object entered a museum collection.

It was not a solo Klimt exhibition and should not be described as a Secession event. The Vienna Secession did not yet exist. The presentation belonged to the Künstlerhaus and to Gerlach's collective publishing enterprise.

The Wien Museum record also cites a 1901 Gerlach & Schenk Kunst-Ausstellung, where the work appeared as catalogue number 251.[1] That citation secures a later documentary appearance. It does not, by itself, identify a sale price, venue history or exact transfer date to the museum.

Collection History and Access

The original oil belongs to the Wien Museum. Its live collection page supplies the title, inventory number, date, medium, measurements, inscription and links to major painting catalogues.[1]

The same record does not publish a continuous provenance chain or say exactly when and from whom this individual painting entered the collection. The Gerlach connection and 1901 catalogue citation are secure; a complete ownership narrative is not. No private intermediary, purchase price or later restitution history should be added without evidence.

The MAK borrowed the painting from the Wien Museum for its 2021 exhibition Teaching Klimt, which explored the artist's education and the teachers who shaped his early work.[6] That loan confirms the object's continuing value for understanding Klimt's formation, but it did not change ownership.

When checked in August 2026, the Wien Museum's online record did not state whether The Fable was hanging in a particular gallery. Museum ownership and current display are different facts. Visitors hoping to see it should verify its physical location directly with the museum.

Why The Fable Matters

The Fable shows Klimt before his familiar public image had formed. He was a young, highly trained painter answering a commission that joined fine art, publishing and applied design. The work's clarity was a strength: its central personification and animal pairs could survive translation from oil to print.

Yet clarity does not make it simple. The woman stands apart from the animals even as her scroll depends upon their behaviour. One story turns weakness into aid; another turns hospitality into retaliation. Human instruction emerges from close attention to unequal bodies and reciprocal acts.

The original/print relationship adds another layer. Klimt made a physical painting so that its composition could travel beyond the canvas. Today the oil and one printed plate survive in different Vienna museums under different dates, preserving two parts of the image's intended life.

Seen on its own terms, The Fable needs neither metallic splendour nor mysterious biography. Its achievement lies in making narration visible: a scroll-bearing body, two compact animal dramas and a designed forest held together with the assurance of an artist beginning to claim an individual name.

Frequently Asked Questions

References

Accessed August 2026.

  1. Wien Museum, Online Collection, “Fabel” (Vorlage zu: Gerlach & Schenk, Allegorien und Embleme, Nr. 75a): exact title, inventory 25001, 1883 date, oil-on-canvas medium, image and frame dimensions, inscription, publication function, catalogue references and 1901 catalogue citation. View source.
  2. Gustav Klimt Database, “Theater Painter in the Crown Lands and Vienna”: Gerlach commission and purpose, Fable and Idyll as oil models, woman with scroll, Aesopic animal pairs, early reception context and 1885 Künstlerhaus exhibition. View source.
  3. Albertina, Digital Publications, “Gerlach's Portfolios”: project dates, model-book purpose, Klimt's seven contributions to the first portfolio and the distinction between painted and drawn designs. View source.
  4. Albertina, Digital Publications, “Allegorien und Embleme”: the historicist programme, applied-art purpose, participating artists, contemporary debate and the scope of Klimt's surviving studies. View source.
  5. Leopold Museum, Online Collection, “Allegorien und Embleme,” plate 75a “Die Fabel”: separate 1882 print on paper, 31 × 39 centimetres, inventory 8201 07, design/editor/publisher roles, inscriptions and provenance. View source.
  6. MAK — Museum of Applied Arts, “Teaching Klimt” (2021): the original Fable oil as a Wien Museum loan and its place within the exhibition's account of Klimt's education and teachers. View source.
  7. Wien Museum / Google Arts & Culture, “Gustav Klimt: Allegories 1882–1897”: institutional interpretation of the woman as the embodiment of Fable observing the animals' allegorical behaviour. View source.

Discussion

The Fable rewards close attention to source context, object identity and careful reproduction boundaries.