This highly decorative painting with its life-size figures is further ornamented by the use of gold leaf. Klimt's father, Ernst, was an engraver of gold and silver, and his profession undoubtedly rubbed off on his offspring - Klimt's brother Georg went on to become a goldsmith. Klimt was educated, with a grant from the state, at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. There his education was highly traditional, focusing on and trying to emulate, through rigorous copying, the works of past masters. Despite this traditional teaching, Klimt would distance himself from the Historicists and the art Establishment and gain a reputation as a leading member of the Viennese Secession and the Viennese Workshop.
Klimt's works dating from the turn of the twentieth century are instantly recognisable and have ensured his worldwide fame. Yet, after a career as a successful commercial portraitist and painter, who undertook large-scale projects decorating public works, this distinctive and unnaturalistic style earned him much criticism and condemnation, and he was repeatedly at loggerheads with the academic and artistic community in Vienna.