Egon Schiele

Willy Verkauf, Vienna & Paris
Acquired from the above by the late owner on 23rd June 1962

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount in the top two corners. There are areas of paper rubbing in the lower left and lower right corner. There are two nailhead-sized spots of foxing in the upper right quadrant. Apart from some time-staining, particularly to all four edges of the sheet, this work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate, although the ocre tone of the hair is slightly stronger, the colours overall brighter and the paper tone is lighter in the original.
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Executed in 1911, Halbakt is a beautiful example of Schiele's early Expressionist work. The young seated woman, wearing only a patterned drapery with strong folcloric colours, is wonderfully depicted showing her striking blond hair-style, orange-coloured lips, bare torso and rosy cheeks. The model's expressive facial features are characteristic of the artist's avant-garde style and his rendering of the human image.

Jane Kallir noted about Schiele's work from this period: 'Schiele likes to divide the sheet into discrete colour areas, each bounded and determined by the contours of the underlying drawing and treated in a distinctive manner, but whereas in the early part of 1911 these areas are filled more or less solidly, by midyear a multitude of colours is deployed in each moist puddle of pigment. This new command of the medium is used to create more subtle contrasts between compositional elements; for example, the painterly complexity of the drapery plays off against flesh barely touched with colour' (J. Kallir, op. cit, New York, 1998, p. 433).

'For the remainder of his career Schiele was wont to contrast expressively nuanced flesh tones with comparatively unmodulated swathes of drapery. Pigment is scored by the flow of water and the tug of the brush in a manner that is more directly responsive to the contours of the surrounding drawing than to the dictates of three-dimensional likeness. Consequently, Schiele's spaces are essentially artistic, as was the flat space in Jugendstil compositions' (ibid., pp. 37-38). Halbakt is a strong example of Schiele's style of that period, reflecting his own individual Expressionistic artistic language.