Egon Schiele

Richard Davis, Minneapolis
Galerie St. Etienne, New York (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above

(possibly) Vienna, Neue Galerie, Gedächtnisausstellung Egon Schiele, 1928
New York, Galerie St. Etienne, Lovis Corinth, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele, 1953

New York, Galerie St. Etienne, Egon Schiele: Watercolors and Drawings, 1957, no. 18

New York, Galerie St. Etienne, European and America Expressionists, 1959

Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art; New York, Galerie St. Etienne; Louisville, J.B. Speed Art Museum; Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute and Minneapolis, Institute of Arts, Egon Schiele, 1960-61, no. 34

New York, Galerie St. Etienne, Paintings by Expressionists, 1962

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, London, 1998, no. 1357, illustrated p. 506

The subject of the present portrait is Miss Wärndorfer, the daughter of Fritz Wärndorfer (1868-1939), a wealthy Austrian industrialist and generous patron of the arts. Together with the architect Josef Hoffmann and the painter Kolman Moser, he founded the Wiener Werkstätte in 1903, and was its principal financier until 1913, when he encountered financial difficulties that finally forced him to emigrate to the United States in the following year. Wärndorfer not only supported the leading Viennese artists and craftsmen of the early 20^th century, but was also a pioneering patron of artists across Europe, including the Belgian sculptor Georges Minne and the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Schiele executed several studies of Wärndorfer’s family members, and a watercolor of Wärndorfer himself, also dating from 1913 (see: Jane Kallir, op. cit., no. 1227).

The Wiener Werkstätte was an association of designers and craftspeople and a manufacturing cooperative, specializing in the production of handmade metalwork, jewellery, furniture, textiles and leather articles. It was also responsible for a range of interior designs and architectural projects, producing posters, books and wallpapers as well as providing designs for ceramics, glassware and costume. Like the Biedermeier style that dominated most of German-speaking Europe from 1815-1848, the Wiener Werkstätte style was a total design concept that pervaded all aspects of everyday life, based on the principles of functionality, clean geometric lines and the use of simple, high-quality materials. Although the group placed a great deal of emphasis on simple furniture and objects that could be mass-manufactured and thus accessible to a larger share of the public, particularly the growing middle class, they relied on wealthy patrons like Wärndorfer for many of their most spectacular commissions.

Portrait of Miss Wärndorfer reflects Schiele’s debt to the ideas of the Wiener Werkstätte, as well as to Jugendstil, a contemporary style that combined crisp, simple outlines with bright, flatly applied colors. In the present work, the artist delighted in the contrast between the delicate areas of the girl’s body and the bold, colorful motif of her shirt. The face and hands of the sitter are treated with the soft, subtle brushstrokes characteristic of Schiele’s nudes, while the crisp outlines of the fabric, treated without any shading or modelling, derive from the Jugendstil fashion. This trend, primarily used in Austria and Germany for posters and book illustrations, was an important influence in the work of both Schiele and Gustav Klimt. In adopting this innovative style, the present work is not only a powerful portrait, but also an important document of the avant-garde movements of its time.