Egon Schiele

Dr Heinrich Rieger, Vienna
Otto Kraus, Vienna
Sale: Sotheby's, London, 1st July 1987, lot 461
Private Collection, Europe (purchased at the above sale; sale: Sotheby's, London, 2nd December 1992, lot 134)
Prof Dr Rudolph Leopold, Vienna (purchased at the above sale)
Private Collection, Vienna (acquired from the above circa 1995)

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, The Complete Works, New York, 1990, no. 2304, illustrated p. 618

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, attached to the mount intermittently and floating in the overmount. There are a few pin holes along the upper edge. There is a horizontal 7cm-long repaired tear towards the lower left corner and a further few very small repaired tears and small nicks in places to the left and lower edges. There are some very minor spots of foxing in places, mainly to the extreme right edge. Otherwise the work is in good condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

In the final years of his tragically short life, Schiele achieved a new level of artistic maturity, adopting an assured, elegant and arresting line. As Jane Kallir observes: ‘He had always been a demon draftsman, capable of achieving stop-action effects comparable to those of photography, and his line, by 1917, had acquired an unprecedented degree of precision... Schiele's drawing technique—the armature upon which all his painted forms rested—had acquired an almost classical purity. Peschka accused him, with some accuracy, of reverting to Griepenkerl's precepts, and it is true that Schiele's work manifested a heretofore unknown fidelity to the representational integrity of his subject matter and a new sensitivity to the ability of line to suggest volume. Schiele's hand had never been surer, more capable of grasping, in a single breathtaking sweep, the complete contour of a figure. This extreme dexterity invited mannerism; when his subject was not particularly exciting, drawing was just too easy for him. And yet, when he was inspired, his execution was flawless; he had found, in the best of his late work, the perfect line’ (Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, Life and Work, New York, 2003, pp. 223 & 230).

In contrast to the brittle febrility of his earlier nudes, the manner in which he presented the female form in his later works achieves a sense of languorous corporeality. Jane Kallir comments that ‘Schiele’s women are, by 1917-18, thoroughly modern. Like most modern women, they own their sexuality. The nude and semi-nude models take pride in their seductive bodies and are empowered by their allure […] Nor are they projections of the artist’s ego. They combine the mystery and the specificity of complete, independent human beings’ (Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele’s Women, Munich, 2012, p. 266).

This lot is sold pursuant to a settlement agreement between the current owner and the heirs of Dr Heinrich Rieger.