Egon Schiele

Rudolf Leopold, Egon Schiele: Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, London, 1973, no. 107, illustrated p. 537
Gianfranco Malafarina, L'opera di Schiele, Milan, 1982, no. 106
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, London, 1998, no. 135, illustrated p. 285

Painted in 1908, Häuser in Krumau is an intimate oil by Egon Schiele depicting the small town of Krumau, formerly part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and now part of the Czech Republic’s Bohemian region, on the banks of the Moldau river (fig. 1). The painter had close links with the town of Krumau, which was the birthplace of his mother Marie, and was often a refuge for the artist when he was experiencing difficult times in his life. Jane Kallir writes: 'Schiele’s favourite landscape subject was the town of Krumau (today Cesky Krumlov). Krumau was indisputably an old city, a medieval time capsule whose winding streets and crumbling buildings embodied for Schiele an eternity of human decay and persistence. Situated around and within a tortous bend in the Moldau river, Krumau has a compact, island-like configuration that Schiele found compositionally intriguing’ (J. Kallir, Egon Schiele, New York, 1994, p. 96).

Otto Brill was one of the foremost Jewish collectors of works by contemporary artists such as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele in fin-de-siècle Vienna. He was a partner of Galerie Würthle, a close advisor for the collector Lea Bondi Jaray and co-founder of the St. George’s Street Gallery in London in the 1940s. In 1938 Otto Brill and his wife Lilly had to flee Vienna and emigrated to London.  They were able to take the majority of their collection, including the present work, with them. Häuser in Krumau is a reflection of Schiele’s early œuvre heralding his expressionist approach, and already standing as an example of a modernist landscape.

comp: 402D06008_COMP     Fig. 1, View of Krumau, Breite Gasse