Egon Schiele

Serge Sabarsky, New York (acquired in March 1973, inventory number 12.1615)
Saul P. Steinberg, New York (and sold: Christie's, New York, May 19, 1981, lot 116)
Private Collection, London (acquired at the above sale and sold: Sotheby's, London, March 28, 1984, lot 325)
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

Munich, Galerie Schweinsteiger, Egon Schiele, 1976, n.n.
London, Marlborough Fine Art, Ltd., Egon Schiele, 1979, no. 25, illustrated in the catalogue
Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art, Egon Schiele, 1979, no. 30, illustrated in the catalogue 
Nyon, Galerie Loyse von Oppenheim, Egon Schiele, 1980, n.n.
New York, Gagosian Gallery, Egon Schiele: Nudes, 1994, n.n.

"Egon Schiele", Mizue, September 1977, p. 17
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York, 1990, no. 1028, illustrated p. 466
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York, 1998, no. 1028, illustrated p. 466

Executed on buff colored wove paper, not laid down. Hinged to a mount at two places on the top edge on verso. The pigment is fresh and bright. Top, left and right edges are deckled and slightly irregular. Artist pinholes visible in corners. Some minor nicks to the edge of the sheet, some of which have been repaired and faint flattened creases along the extreme perimeter, not visible when framed. Remnants of old framer's tape visible on verso on the upper edge. Two hairline repaired tears running vertically from the center of the upper edge, visible on the verso of the sheet; they have been very sensitively restored. Another 3/4 inch repaired tear running from the right upper edge. The sheet is time stained. A few scattered spots of foxing in the background. Faint flatted crease in the background to the left of the white drapery. This work is in good overall condition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Executed in 1912, Stehender Akt mit weissen Tuch is a beautiful example of Schiele’s early Expressionist work. Twenty-eight years the junior of fellow Austrian Gustav Klimt, the young Schiele rejected the decorative aesthetic of fin-de siècle Art Nouveau and Viennese Secession. After leaving the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1909, he began to develop his own highly unique style.

The year in which this work was created was a challenging one for the artist. Living in the small town of Neulengbach, his Bohemian lifestyle was objected to by neighbors, and his use of local children as models drew criticism from the more conservative elements. When a retired naval officer’s daughter asked Schiele and his girlfriend Wally Neuzil to help her run away, the couple found themselves in a precarious position. Although they returned the girl to her parents, the father had already pressed charges against Schiele and the artist was briefly imprisoned. This experience—and particularly the loss of freedom and selfhood it entailed—had a marked effect on Schiele’s work. Peter Vergo observes of the period after his release in 1912 that “his manner of depicting erotic nudes now seems subtly different, closer to the contrived poses that characterized the nude photographs then widely (albeit surreptitiously) available” (Peter Vergo in The Radical Nude (exhibition catalogue), The Courtauld Gallery, London, 2014, p. 24). This is not to say that following this experience Schiele’s nudes were not still erotically charged, as Stehender Akt mit weissen Tuch makes evident; the voluptuous curves and provocative sideways gaze of his model convey a mature and knowing sexuality. However, Schiele modulates the brazenness of her nudity with a certain demureness, both in her expression and in the loose white drapery that covers her lower half.

In this respect, the present work shares many similarities with Nude with blue stockings bending forward, now in the Leopold Museum, Vienna, and the slightly earlier Seated girl with bare torso and light blue skirt of the Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. The tense body language, elegant silhouettes, and carefully constructed use of negative space in these works also reflect Schiele’s lingering debt to Klimt. Whereas Klimt had played off the contrast between realistically rendered facial features and ornamental clothing, Schiele now contrasted his subject’s Expressionistic face and body against areas of white gouache and monochromatic garments. His line is unwavering in its careful progress toward the creation of form, yet the thin, sometimes faint outlines of musculature remain remarkably ethereal thanks to his painterly prowess. As Vergo writes: “The propensity to deposit a narrow band of color along principal edges of a form, observed already in 1911, became more pronounced: color washes glide across the central surface and then accumulate in the darker gullies along the periphery... The rounded outlines of his nudes are so soft they appear almost to be melting. His colors, often diluted with white, are equally delicate” (Ibid., pp. 191-92). Schiele’s immense skill as a colorist is evident in the subtle range of blue, whites, purples and orange washes that he uses to conjure volume and depth in the present work. These are contrasted with the orange-red highlights applied to her features, deliberately drawing attention to her face. This emphasizes the conflict between her aloof gaze and the boldness of her stance suggesting—as with many of Schiele’s works—that what we see offers more of an insight into the artist’s perception of himself than what he saw in the women before him.

In 1918 Schiele, along with twenty million Europeans, succumbed to the Spanish influenza. Only twenty-eight years of age at his death, the impact he made on twentieth-century art is difficult to overestimate. “Schiele’s dualistic personality made him the ideal candidate to attempt a reconciliation of Austria’s conflicting aesthetic impulses. Even his stylistic technique—with its precarious combination of naturalistic rendering and expressive stylization, artifice and emotion—was double-edged. Contradictions that had stymied other artists were organically united in him, and it was this that he was able to achieve the ultimate synthesis of Gothic melancholy and Baroque lightheartedness, to find the exalted in the everyday” (Jane Kallir, op. cit., p. 92).