Egon Schiele

Kunsthandlung Max Hevesi, Vienna
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 2nd July 1975, lot 224
Serge Sabarsky & Rudolf Leopold, Vienna (jointly purchased at the above sale)
Serge Sabarsky, New York (from February 1976)
Acquired from the estate of the above by the present owner 

Vienna, Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien; Linz, Neue Galerie der Stadt Linz; Munich, Museum Villa Stuck & Hanover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Egon Schiele: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1981-82, no. 79, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Paris, Hôtel de Ville, Salle Saint-Jean; Kaiserslautern, Pfalzgalerie; Bolzano, Museo Civico & Turin, Palazzo Reale, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele: dessins et aquarelles, 1984-85, no. 82, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Tokyo, Isetan Museum; Aichi, Prefectural Museum; Nara, Prefectural Museum; Yamanashi, Prefectural Museum & Kamakura, Museum of Modern Art, Egon Schiele und Wien zur Jahrhundertwende, 1986, no. 45, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
New York, Neue Galerie, Egon Schiele: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections, 2005-06, no. D122, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

'Egon Schiele', in Mizue, Tokyo, September 1977, p. 35
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York, 1998, no. 1656, illustrated p. 541

Executed on a sheet of cream Japan paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount in the top two corners, floating in the overmount. There are artist's pinholes at the top edge. The sheet has slightly darkened with age, and has several small liquid stains. Apart from a very minor flattened crease in the lower right corner, and a 0.5cm. supported tear at the right edge, this work is in good condition. Colours: The sheet has a richer cream tonality and the colours are overall slightly stronger in the original.
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There is no more revelatory or intimate a subject for an artist than a self-portrait. This was especially true for Egon Schiele, whose unmatched skill as a draughtsman could expose the intimate details and peculiarities of the body that would otherwise go unnoticed. Because he was not dependent upon the cooperation of his models to translate his vision for these works, Schiele's self-portraits are often more revealing than even his most salacious pictures of nude women. He was unrestricted in portraying his own vulnerability, playfulness or absurdity, and this freedom of expression is undeniably apparent in this remarkable gouache from 1914.

 

One of the ways that Schiele explored the expressive potential of his own image was by portraying himself in various guises or costumes. Here, he has taken on the persona of Pierrot, the sad clown from the 17^th century Italian theatrical production known as the Commedia dell'arte. Around the time Schiele completed this work, the Commedia and its characters were popular themes in the art of the avant-garde, most notably in the paintings of Picasso (fig. 1). Schiele was most certainly familiar with this thematic revival and provides his own interpretation here. As if in response to Picasso, who had adopted the character of the Harlequin as his alter-ego, Schiele's choice of subject is the lovelorn Pierrot, Harlequin's naive rival. While traditional depictions of Pierrot feature him dressed in a white smock with a ruffled collar, Schiele has dressed him in Harlequin's characteristically colourful costume. Furthermore, he represented the figure without any eyes, a theme that, according to Jane Kallir, was directly related to the artist's personal fears: 'Schiele's allegorical self-representations were not intended to be autobiographical statements, but it is nonetheless obvious that blindness, for an artist, was an unfortunate choice of theme. As a 'self-seer,' Schiele had formerly been extraordinarily attuned to his own internal responses, but at times blind to the outside world. In order to make more meaningful contact with others, would the artist have to lose touch with himself?' (J. Kallir, Egon Schiele, Drawings and Watercolors, New York, 2003, p. 279).

 

Schiele formatted the present work so that it defies traditional expectations of space. The dramatic appearance of his body here is largely a result of the artist's intentional re-orientation of his sheet. Schiele must have been prostrate on the floor and propped up on his elbows when he posed for the present work, but he formatted the composition as a vertical image. As a result, he appears to be standing, or perhaps in free-fall, with his head thrown backwards and his arms arched dramatically in the air. The jagged contours of his body, comprised of a frenzied cross-hatching of colour, form a diagonal projectile from the lower left to the upper right of the sheet, harnessing the powerful energy of colour, line and dynamic form.

 

Jane Kallir has offered the following analysis for Schiele's 'unothodox' compositional formats executed around this time (fig. 2): 'The palpable volumes in Schiele's 1914 drawings and watercolors exacerbated the sense of spatial dislocation produced by his unorthodox composition angles. More realistically three-dimensional figures seemed to call for more realistic placement in a recognizable space. Schiele, however, refused to bow to this demand and instead persisted in signing drawings of recumbent figures as verticals. The push-pull between conventional realism and Schiele's insistence on maintaining a self-contained artistic realm was the aesthetic counterpart to an ongoing personal conflict between society and self. Where did he want to live, literally and metaphorically? In the world of his fantasies, or in the real world?' (ibid., p. 276).

 

 

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Deux saltimbanques avec un chien, 1905, gouache on card, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Fig. 2, Egon Schiele, Kämpfer, 1913, gouache and pencil on paper, Private Collection

fig. 3, Egon Schiele, March 1914. Photograph by Anton Josef Trcka