Egon Schiele

Galerie Würthle, Vienna
Dover Street Gallery, London
Private Collection, New York (sold: Claude Aguttes, Paris, 31st October 2007, lot 148)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount at the reverse of the top two corners, floating in the mount. There is a very small repaired tear to the upper left corner and some slight surface abrasion to the upper left edge. Apart from a minor crease to the upper right edge, some discolouration to the sheet and some very minor specks of foxing towards the lower edge, this work is in good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although the paper tone is warmer and the crayon's tone is more nuanced in the original.
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'I want to start anew' Schiele wrote to his brother-in-law, Anton Peschka, shortly after returning to Vienna in January 1917. 'It seems to me that until now I have just been preparing the tools' (quoted in Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolours, London, 2003, p. 384).

1917 was a remarkably productive year for Schiele, the privations of the previous year were dramatically reduced and for the first time in his career he was financially secure. Jane Kallir describes the change in circumstances: 'By midyear, his career was perking along very nicely, and the artist could at long last afford to emulate the creative life-style of his mentor Gustav Klimt. A harem of models graced Schiele's studio' (quoted in J. Kallir, Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolours, London, 2003, p. 384). The freedom of choice offered by these new models lead him to execute a series of outstanding nudes (fig. 1) that include the present work.

Discussing the extraordinary perspectives Schiele employed when composing his drawings Wolfgang Fischer wrote: 'Schiele once said that he would like to circle over the city like a bird of prey. And it was from that perspective that he approached the objects of his scrutiny, whether townscape or nude model. The object was the victim of Schiele's will: he had to possess it, entire, for himself. In a sense, Schiele cut his nude models out of their surroundings. Shorn of their distracting references to the real, with no indication of available light and shadow, the time of day, or the quality of the air, they serve as vehicles for erotic emotion in the greatest variety of positions [...]. The unworked white or brown of the paper served as an empty space, a stage on which things might happen' (W. G. Fischer, Schiele, Cologne, 2004, p. 47).

The exquisite drawings Schiele executed in the last years of his life brought lasting public acclaim. After viewing a collection of drawings at the Galerie Arnot in Vienna in June 1918, the final month of the artist's life, the critic A.F. Seligmann wrote in the Neue Freie Presse: 'It is always a pleasure to look at drawings by Egon Schiele. Superb how, while completely renouncing light and shade, tone and colour, the entire life, the whole expression of the subject appears captured in the contour alone' (quoted in Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna 1898-1918, Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele and their Contemporaries, Oxford, 1975, p. 241).

Fig. 1, Egon Schiele, Sitzende Frau mit violetten Strümpfen, 1917, gouache and black crayon on paper. Sold: Sotheby's, London, 3rd February 2010, lot 14

Fig. 2, Schiele in his studio, 1915