{"id":341885,"date":"2026-03-22T07:43:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T07:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/341885\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T07:43:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T07:43:30","slug":"klimts-pear-tree-at-the-harvard-art-museums-is-one-special-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/341885\/","title":{"rendered":"Klimt’s \u2018Pear Tree\u2019 at the Harvard Art Museums is one special thing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A painting caught my eye at the Harvard Art Museums <\/a>not long ago \u2014 a beautiful pear tree with colors that made me hopeful for spring.<\/p>\n

I was surprised to read that it was Gustav Klimt. To be more specific, it was his \u201cPear Tree, 1903 (reworked by the artist 1903\/1918).\u201d<\/p>\n

You may already know this work is Klimt, dear reader. Forgive me, I\u2019m not much of an art historian.<\/p>\n

My thought was: \u201cKlimt … did trees?\u201d <\/p>\n

Going to college in the 1990s ruined Klimt for me. Dorm art is different now \u2014 students have a wide range of options and can download\/create whatever they want \u2014 but back in my day, there were only about 20 options for posters at the shop down the hill from campus.<\/p>\n

They included: John Belushi wearing a top that says \u201cCOLLEGE,<\/a>\u201c various Georgia O\u2019Keeffe vaginal allusions, Al Pacino in \u201cScarface,\u201d band posters (Nirvana, etc.), Salvador Dali melting clocks, and, on the walls of some of my peers, Klimt\u2019s \u201cThe Kiss.\u201d<\/p>\n

I found the work romantic and aspirational at first. Maybe someone would kiss me like that, now that I was in college. Anything seemed possible.<\/p>\n

But after a few months, those \u201cKiss\u201d posters had peeled. I\u2019d seen classmates puke in front of the image. Students were hooking up and then avoiding each other. \u201cThe Kiss\u201d seemed to mock us all as a depiction of heavenly love and contentment amid a real-life scene of hungover teens eating aged pizza near snow boots soiled by Syracuse weather.<\/p>\n

\"InIn this image released on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, NFT presentation “The Kiss” by Gustav Klimt at the Upper Belvedere Gallery, Austria. Ouriel Morgensztern\/Associated Press<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Kiss\u201d lost its meaning \u2014 and even years later, other Klimt works<\/a> with similar golden palettes were spoiled by association.<\/p>\n

But finding \u201cPear Tree\u201d \u2014 its lushness, its bright colors \u2014 was a new way into Klimt. <\/p>\n

Lynette Roth<\/a>, curator at the Harvard Art Museums, explained in an interview that even though Klimt\u2019s \u201cPear Tree\u201d was revelatory to me, a quarter of his works are actually landscapes.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long time, there was a misconception that Klimt was always painting people,\u201d she said. \u201cThey did a show at the Neue Galerie<\/a> in New York [in 2024] and borrowed our \u2018Pear Tree\u2019 and showed it with other landscapes to drive home how committed he was to landscape, and especially landscape in Upper Austria.”<\/p>\n

Roth said that apart from the rare loan to Neue, the work is \u201calways on permanent view\u201d at the Harvard Art Museums. In fact, a postcard featuring Klimt\u2019s \u201cPear Tree\u201d is a staple in the gift shop.<\/p>\n

Another notable fact about the painting that calls to me as someone who primarily writes about human relationships<\/a>, \u201cPear Tree\u201d was Klimt\u2019s gift to Emilie Fl\u00f6ge, whom the museum placard calls \u201chis muse and mistress in 1903.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMistress\u201d feels like a very 1903 word to describe Fl\u00f6ge. She was Klimt\u2019s longtime partner.<\/p>\n

Fl\u00f6ge was an artist herself \u2014 in the world of textiles and fashion \u2014 and is credited with designing loose-fitting dresses for women<\/a> so they could actually move around.<\/p>\n

That means this beautiful painting \u2014 housed right in Harvard Square \u2014 was given as a token of love to a woman who is perhaps indirectly responsible for me having a wardrobe that allows me to remain comfortable after eating a massive wrap from Falafel King<\/a> near work.<\/p>\n

Give the woman all the pear trees for that. <\/p>\n

As a relationship writer, I also love that Klimt kept working on this painting long after he\u2019d given it to Fl\u00f6ge. He tinkered for years, adding to the scene. You\u2019ll notice the description says, “reworked by the artist 1903\/1918.\u2033<\/p>\n

Roth told me, \u201cIt becomes, through that reworking, even more filled in. The trees, at the lower right, were more bare. It was more open. And he went back in and kept adding to that \u2014 which is the advantage of giving it to your romantic partner, your lifetime companion. He still had access.\u201d <\/p>\n

Seems like a metaphor, right? Love is not still life. You have to keep adjusting and contributing so it can flourish. <\/p>\n

The pear tree kept growing. <\/p>\n

I find that more romantic than \u201cThe Kiss\u201d \u2014 more authentic, more aspirational, more beautiful.<\/p>\n

Meredith Goldstein <\/a>can be reached at Meredith.Goldstein@Globe.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A painting caught my eye at the Harvard Art Museums not long ago \u2014 a beautiful pear tree…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-341885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}