Egon Schiele

Otto Kallir, Vienna 
Vita Maria Künstler, Vienna 
Galerie Würthe, Vienna
Wolfgang Fischer (Fischer Fine Art, Ltd.), London
Anthony Abroms, Dallas (and sold: Sotheby's, New York, November 12, 1988, lot 158)
Acquired at the above sale 

New York, Galerie St. Etienne, Schiele, 1957, no. 17
New York, Galerie St. Etienne, Schiele, 1961, no. 28
New York, Galerie St. Etienne, Schiele, 1965, no. 46

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York, 1990, no. 1241, illustrated p. 493
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, Expanded Edition, New York, 1998, no. 1241, illustrated p. 493
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: Oeuvre complet, Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, Paris, 2001, no. 1241, illustrated p. 493 (titled Girl with Black Stocking and Shoe)

Executed on cream wove paper. Sheet is hinged to a mat near upper corners on verso. Roughly 1 inch of the sheet has been folded under itself on the left edge for presentation. Upper edge of sheet is deckled. There is a faint mat stain around the extreme perimeter and a few scattered pindots of foxing. There is a nailhead sized surface stain on the right edge just below the upper right corner and a spot of possible repair at the extreme upper right corner. There is some minor creasing to the sheet in the right background. There is some surface dirt transfer in the upper left quadrant in the background. Overall the work is in good 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.
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Schiele may be counted among the most influential draftsmen of the modern movement, his contour drawings being the most readily identifiable of the entire Expressionist school. As Jane Kallir writes, “Like the late medieval German artists Hans Holbein and Albrecht Durer—with whom he merits comparison—Schiele was a consummate master of line. Early on, he learned to work fast. His hated master at the academy, Christian Griepenkerl, gave timed exercises, and Schiele of his own volition often drew with a stopwatch in hand. His entire life was a search for the perfect line: the line that hits the target every time; the line that knows no eraser. This, however, does not mean that Schiele’s approach was doctrinaire or monolithic. Flexibility and spontaneity were essential to his quest. His contours could be flowing and elegant in the Jugendstil manner, primitive in the Expressionistic mode, clipped and jagged, spare and sensual, or intertwined with curlicues and scarlike hatchings. The best of Schiele’s drawings demonstrate a perfect accord among the artist’s hand, his perceptions of his subject, and the subject’s physical appearance” (Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1994, p. 14).

1913 marked Schiele's spiritual departure from a young adulthood occupied by inner turmoil and the anxiety of sexual awakening. As he stepped out of his vice and into a new maturity, his work, too, traded its blatant eroticism for a new tenderness, its voyeurism for an attentive intimacy. Gently inching away from his exploitation of the angular body's dramatic expressivity, the present work frames what Kallir describes as Schiele's rendering of "rounder, more wholesome shapes...[that] differ in their ability to evoke an underlying structure of bone and muscle" (Jane Kallir, op. cit., p. 490).

The present lot belonged to the art dealer Otto Nirenstein, who later took the name of Kallir. In 1923, Kallir would open the Neue Galerie with an exhibition of Schiele's paintings and later publish the first catalogue raisonné of his works in 1930. Threatened by the law against "degenerated art" in 1938, Liegendes Mädchen mit Schwarzen Strümpfen was then owned by Vita Maria Künstler who took over the Neue Galerie when Kallir emigrated to the United States.