My name is Alison Hokanson and I work in the Department of European Paintings here at The Met.

This is a work by the Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt. It's a portrait of a young girl named Mäda Primavesi. Mäda was the daughter of the banker and industrialist Otto Primavesi and his wife, Eugenia, who were important patrons of cutting-edge art and design. She was probably eight years old when Klimt started the painting.

As was common for Klimt, he made numerous sketches of Mäda, experimenting with pose, with costumes, and with background motifs. In the final version, Mäda is wearing a white dress ornamented with beaded flowers, which was created at Klimt's suggestion by his companion, the designer Emilie Flöge. Mäda is standing on a rug ornamented with natural motifs: flowers, birds, fish, even a dog. By the time that Klimt made this portrait late in his career, he had already developed a signature portrait style, in which the sitters were portrayed amidst a symphony of colorful and abstract patterns.

What's most remarkable to me about this painting is the pose. Mäda has a firm stance. She has one arm akimbo. She is unsmiling and she seems very mature and self-assured. We have photographs of Mäda from around this time period and this is actually an extraordinarily good likeness. I mean she was apparently a tomboy, a very assertive child. And so this is, I think, in a sense very much how she was.