Sunday

This is Farm Garden with Sunflowers by Gustav Klimt, 1907 (so round about the same time as The Kiss).

I love Klimt’s Austrian landscapes and paintings of gardens as much as I love his erotically charged paintings, in which a stylised version of the flora often makes its way to the Art Nouveau-ish fabrics the people are wearing, draped in or swooning on. Here, for e.g., is a detail from The Kiss.

I also love how mosaic-like this painting is, almost like the design for a fabric, and how wonderfully flat. There is no sky, no foreground, just full and immediate immersion into this wild, beautiful explosion of colour and fecundity.

More prosaically, this is pretty much my idea of the ideal border in high summer, and in fact Klimt’s preparatory sketches for his sitters’ clothing are very like a garden designer’s planting scheme.

Speaking of which! If you’re in the UK, loads of private gardens are open to visitors today under the National Garden Scheme - a lovely thing to do with your afternoon. In Suffolk, the gardens include Olivia Laing’s, tickets here.

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