"Hope II" was Klimt's second exploration of the pregnancy theme (pregnant woman had appeared as subordinate images in several of his earlier allegories), and was in many ways less overtly provocative than "Hope I." The woman's abdomen was no lnoger bared, and the ghoulish spectess that featured prominently in the earlier painting is here discretely hidden in the decorative folds of her gown. "Hope II" has weathered the full brunt of Klimt's mosaic phase and began to point, albeit tentatively, toward a different future. Many aspects of the composition were by now familiar: Once again a central pillar of bodies cut through a square canvas, and the surrounding space, however luminous in its ornamental veneer, was a negative as well as a positive area, a void as well as a presence. Pregnancy (alluded to by such recurrent titles as "Hope" or "Expectation") was the ideal condition for the Klimtian woman, a state of physical as well as psychological waiting, of utmost passivity. In his slightly later "Stoclet Frieze," the artist would pair "Expectation" with its natural complement, "Fulfillment," and it is possible that a similar relationship was intended between "Hope II" and "The Kiss."
