Egon Schiele

Julius Martin (possibly acquired directly from the artist)
Setty Mähly, Switzerland (until the 1960s)
Acquired by the present owner in the early 1970s

Sich aufstützende blonde Nackte mit dunklen Strümpfen, executed in 1914, is a powerful and arresting image of a female nude, depicting her as a femme fatale and reflecting the artist's obsession with the allure and eroticism of the female body. Schiele relished depicting the curves and contours of the nude's anatomy, the palpable sense of energy he must have felt as he rendered the forms of the model on paper is reflected in the intensity of the brushstrokes. As Simon Wilson observed: 'Schiele's mature art presents us with an image of nudes, free-floating, seen from strange and unusual angles and in strange and unusual postures, that is quite new in the long history of the human image in Western Art' (S. Wilson, Egon Schiele, Ithaca, 1980, p. 18).

Schiele's obsession with the nude body and its expressive depiction can be dated back to 1910, the year the artist started to develop an independent and Expressionist artistic language. At this point in his life sexualised images of women were common in his repertoire, and they are depicted in a highly impersonal manner, their facial features often blurred or hidden. His primal concern was the human body and its erotic potential, which he so obsessively explored since then.

In the present exquisite gouache we can see the fascination that Schiele took in rendering the model's particular posture, back and left arm. He uses sharp body contours to evoke the tension in her muscles. The crawling pose of the nude suggests a provocative sexuality, emphasised by her pointy red lips and voluminous, dishevelled hair. Depicted in profile, the model seems unaware of being observed, while her suhhestive posture appears designed to provoke voyeuristic tendencies in the viewer. The woman in the present work takes up the entirety of the picture surface. Her physical presence is so dominant that her head and feet appear to extend beyond the edges of the sheet, and the figure appears boxed in within the confines of the picture plane. The yellow almost golden shimmering tonality of the woman's hair, as well as her red highlighted lips and green body outlines, with which Schiele underlined the volume of her body, are characteristic of the new colouristic developments in the artist's work of 1914. As Jane Kallir pointed out: 'Perfecting an approach, traceable to 1913, that he will pursue for the rest of his life, Schiele uses a translucent underglaze of ochre or brown to define principle volumes, then superimposes dabs of red, green, and blue to mold an almost papable bulk' (ibid., op. cit., p. 520).

'Perhaps more so than any other year', J. Kallir notes, '1914 demonstrates the manner in which, for Schiele, radical aesthetic means serve as a mask for conservative ends. The rickrack embellishment of favourite features such as armpits or hair reaches an unprecedented frenzy by late spring... the practise of edging flesh in contrasting tones of red, green and ochre continues in the early part of the year, and these modelled areas are characteristically set off against flat, brightly coloured patches of drapery or clothing' (op. cit., p. 520), as is evident in the stockings of the nude. 'Gradually the multi-hued brushstrokes become bolder, with colours overlapping to sculpt denser volumes' (ibid., op. cit., p. 520).

Kallir also comments on the placement of the models in these drawings, noting the psychological implications that they held for the artist: 'Schiele's growing concern with plasticity eventually generates a more organic, fluid line. In comparison with earlier 1914 work, nudes from the latter part of the year have rounded, voluptuous contours. There are hints of an almost conventional realism in the simplification of line and in the integration of contour and volume. As a result, skewed perspective - always an influence of the poses - now assumes a more disturbing character. The relative two-dimensionality of his preceding style aesthetically neutralized Schiele's affinity to spatial dislocation, but the increased volumetric density of his work from 1914 on seems to demand a concomitant realism. By refusing to bow to this demand and doggedly persisting in signing drawings of recumbent figures as verticals, Schiele intentionally creates a spatial unease that heightens the work's totemic impact' (ibid., p. 520).

In the present work, Schiele positions his model horizontally but in an overtly sexual pose. Women portrayed in his gouaches of that period convey the character of a femme fatale, an image frequently captured by the artist in 1914. In Sich aufstützende blonde Nackte mit dunklen Strümpfen Schiele depicts a strong, level-headed woman as an alluring sexual being, but at the same time gives full and equal value to the metaphysical and the psychological vulnerability of the human condition. The present work is a stunning gouache showing the artist's strength of his pre-war Expressionist style and belongs to some of the finest examples in his oeuvre.