This painting is the third in a series of views of Schloss Kammer, a baroque palace on the shore of Lake Attersee in Upper Austria. Klimt spent several summers in the region, often staying in the nearby village of Litzlberg, and painted the landscape around the Attersee between 1900 and 1916. Unlike his earlier, more ornamental portraits, Water Castle belongs to a period when Klimt focused almost exclusively on landscape. He often used a telescope-like viewfinder (a mechanical aide to isolate and crop sections of the landscape) to frame scenes, which may explain the square format and compressed perspective. The palace is obscured behind a screen of poplars. There is no visible path, no sky — just water, trees, and the distant façade. As with many of his landscapes, Klimt painted it in the studio based on sketches and photographs made on site.