Egon Schiele

Willard Golovin, New York
Harriet Griffin Gallery, New York
José Martinez-Cañas, Florida
Pepsi Co., Inc., New York (sold: Sotheby's, New York, 16^th May 1984, lot 141a)
Private Collection, New York (purchased at the above sale. Sold: Sotheby's, London, 1^st December 1992, lot 10)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

 

Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic, Egon Schiele Foundation, Egon Schiele, 1993-94
New York, Neue Galerie, New Worlds: German and Austrian Art, 1890-1940, 2002-03
New York, Neue Galerie, Egon Schiele: The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections, 2005-06, no. D57, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

 

Serge Sabarsky, Egon Schiele, Vienna, 1993, no. 32, illustrated p. 83
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, London, 1998, no. 685, illustrated p. 425

Executed on buff wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount in the top two corners, floating in the mount. There are artist's pinholes in the top two corners, and some scattered small remnants of tape on the reverse, from previous mounting. Apart from some very light typical handling creases in the corners, this work is in very good condition. Colours: In comparison with the printed catalogue illustration, the colours are overall slightly warmer and deeper in the original.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Schiele's self-portraits are amongst the most intimate and psychologically penetrating of his œuvre. His absorption with his own image is unique in 20th century art. Selbstbildnis dates from 1910, the year regarded as a major turning-point in his art. Schiele's fine draughtsmanship had long been praised and admired. Now, as he emerged as an individual artist with supreme creative talent, his drawings became more pronouncedly daring in their subjects and their execution. In the present work the artist is less concerned with the intricacies of his anatomy and more focused on the visual impact of the composition as a whole. The single emphasis is on his highly expressive face, particularly the pronounced mouth and ominous eyes. Schiele depicts himself as a self-posessed, mature adult investigating the psychology of his character, rather than his physicality. 

In technical terms the development of Schiele's work in 1910 is such that it leaves all prior efforts far behind. 'A noteworthy feature of these self-portraits is that the stylistic devices of Klimt... have been discarded and an independent artistic idiom initiated... An exhaustive experimentation was carried out. Dozens of drawings and watercolours were devoted to the observation of various aspects of the artist – in street dress, draped only in a sheet, nude half figure studies or 'decapitated' head studies... Perhaps in reaction to the obvious theatrics of the gesticulating self-portraits, Schiele also explored a quite contrary method of psyche-tapping. In a series of images showing himself from bust up, he posed the problem of conveying maximum expressiveness in the face and upper torso without the emotive benefit of hand gestures... Schiele embarked on a row of violently coloured watercolour portrayals of heads showing himself in the grip of various mordant emotions' (Alessandra Comini, Egon Schiele's Portraits, Berkeley, 1974, pp. 57-58).

Discussing the artist's self-portraits, Thomas M. Messer wrote: 'Self-search and self-revelation are fundamental objectives of Egon Schiele's art. Passing effortlessly beyond outward appearances, he established an inner image which then in turn, becomes a bridge for more remote and profound exploration. The resulting work may, therefore, present itself as a synthesis of a stratified search in which the physical, the psychic and the spiritual are condensed into a single revelatory portrait of self' (T. M. Messer, Egon Schiele Work on Paper (exhibition catalogue), Galerie St. Etienne, New York, 1965, p. 9).