Adele Bloch-Bauer was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1881, into a wealthy Jewish banking family. Entered arranged marriage at a young age with Jewish sugar magnate an industrialist Ferdinand Bloch Bauer. Lived with Bloch Bauer near Prague and in Vienna, where Ferdinand became a prominent banker.They remained childless; she worked as a dressmaker. She met the artist Gustav Klimt, of whom Ferdinand was a major patron, and began a relationship with him after he was commissioned to paint her portrait in 1899. She first appears in a sketchy by him in 1900.
She died of meningitis in 1925 at the age of forty-three. In her will, executed two years earlier, she named five of the Klimt painting in dispute (and one other) and asked that Ferdinand donate them to the Austrian Gallery upon his death.
Who is Adele Bloch-Bauer in Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1?
