Egon Schiele

(probably) Fritz and Grete Blaskopf, Vienna & London

Peter Spelman & Alexandra Aldham (grandchildren of the above, and sold: Sotheby's, London, December 5, 1985, lot 536)

Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

New York, Gagosian Gallery, Nudes: Egon Schiele, 1994, no. 13, illustrated in color in the catalogue  

Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Michigan Collects, 1997

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York, 1990, no. D.821, illustrated p. 441

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York, 1998, no. D.821, illustrated p. 441

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Executed in 1911, Sich Entkleidendes Mädchen is a hauntingly beautiful example of Schiele’s early Expressionist work. The young woman, standing and undressing herself, is emphasized by the halo-like embracing line of white gouache characteristic of Schiele’s works from this period. As Jane Kallir notes, “Schiele likes to divide the sheet into discrete color areas, each bounded and determined by the contours of the underlying drawing and treated in a distinctive manner, but whereas in the early part of 1911 these areas are filled more or less solidly, by midyear a multitude of colors is deployed in each moist puddle of pigment. This new command of the medium is used to create more subtle contrasts between compositional components; for example, the painterly  complexity of the drapery plays off against flesh barely touched with color" (J. Kallir, op. cit., New York, 1998,  p. 433).

The tense body language and carefully constructed use of negative space, evident in the present work, reflect Schiele’s lingering debt to Gustav Klimt. Whereas Klimt had played off the contrast between realistically rendered facial features and ornamental clothing, Schiele now contrasted his subjects expressive face and body with the multicolored garment and white gouache. The bold tonal combinations of his favored red-orange, black, and white of early 1911, as seen in Sich Entkleidendes Mädchen, give way to a muted palette employing blue, black, and purple  tones in the latter part of that year. As Schiele already used black and purple for the coloring of the model’s drapery, the present work can be seen as being executed during an important transitional phase in the year 1911.