Roses Among the Trees, 1905 by Gustav Klimt

Here, the tight flower patterning, seen in works such as Flower Garden (1905 - 06), explodes on to a grander scale in a series of tree compositions, including Roses Among the Trees. A profusion of intricately deposited Pointillist-like daubs builds up in to dense foliage, a meshing of green and lilac-blue hues interspersed by the intense yellow smears of fruit. This blue-green eruption of fecundity creates a vibrant color contrast, unlike the predominant red-green color polarization used in Klimt's previous landscape works. Consequently, the perspective is almost obliterated as colors swell up on the picture's surface. To break up this profuse mass, the white climbing rose, a symbol of love portrayed on Tlie Stoclet Frieze's (1905 - 11), "Bush of Life" section, imposes its presence.

Like The Stoclet Frieze, the work is almost abstract in nature and is certainly at the vanguard of twentieth-century Expressionism, with its need to distort reality in order to express emotion or inner vision. Correspondingly, the tree represents for Klimt, a celebration of life, instead of his typical eerie, alienated woodland landscapes with their spindly pillars of ghostlike trunks.