Gustav Klimt, the celebrated painter of fin-de-siecle Vienna, produced portraits of society women, allegorical figure-compositions and sumptuous decorative schemes which evoke the exciting, decadent atmosphere of one of Europe's great cities before World War I. Vienna was being transformed - physically, socially and intellectually - by influential personalities such as Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil and Gustav Mahler, and Klimt was at the heart of its intense cultural life.