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For most of his life, Klimt derived a comfortable income from portraiture. The majority of his sitters were the wives and sisters of the Viennese, often Jewish, haute bourgeoisie. He twice portrayed Adele Bloch-Bauer (1907 and 1912, Neue Galerie, New York and Belvedere, Vienna). The first version marks the height of his gold-encrusted manner of painting, of which The Kiss is the other outstanding example.
The first version originally belonged to the Bloch-Bauer couple; between 1933 and 1941, it was nationalized by the Austrian State. In 2006, the portrait was restituted to the family and later transferred to Neue Galerie in New York.
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