Egon Schiele

Dr. Hans Rosé, Vienna (acquired from the artist in 1917)
Private Collection (by descent from the above and sold: Sotheby's, London, June 26, 1990, lot 320)
Acquired at the above sale by A. Alfred Taubman

London, Marlborough Gallery, Egon Schiele, Drawings and Watercolours: 1907-1918, 1969, no. 46, illustrated in the catalogue

Wolfgang Fischer, "Egon Schiele als 'Militärzeichner,' Albertina-Studien, 1966, illustrated p. 74
Frank Whitford, Egon Schiele, London, 1981, fig. 137, illustrated n.p.
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele:  The Complete Works, New York, 1990, no. 2160, fig. 89, illustrated pp. 213 & 601
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele:  The Complete Works, New York, 1998, no. 2160, fig. 89, illustrated pp. 213 & 601

Executed on cream wove paper not laid down. The sheet is floating in the mount and affixed to the mount on the verso of each of the corners. There are artist pinholes in the upper corners and some very minor flattened creases along the upper edge and tips of the lower corners. There is a half inch repaired tear running horizontally from center right edge. The sheet is likely time stained, a few faint spots of foxing. This work is in overall very good condition.
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In 1917 Hans Rosé—the commanding officer at the Military Supply Depot to which Schiele had been posted—commissioned a series of drawings from the artist. Schiele’s deeply ambivalent feeling towards the military had seen an improvement with his new posting; as Jane Kallir explains, “the commanding officer, Hans Rosé, was fully prepared to support the artist’s creative proclivities. Again he [Schiele] entertained the staff by drawing portraits…Schiele’s talents were applied to such practical items as signs, the account book, and an ex-libris, but Rosé’s happiest idea was the compilation of a Festschrift documenting all supply depots in the empire. Though the Festschrift was never published, many of Schiele’s drawings—made, for the most part, during a single ‘business trip’ from June 9 through 23—survive" (Jane Kallir, op. cit., p. 213).

The present work, showing a civilian at work in a supply depot storeroom, is among the most appealing in this series of drawings. Working in characteristic black crayon, Schiele renders the scene in remarkable detail. He also succeeds in reconciling the verisimilitude necessary for an official drawing with the expressive qualities that were integral to his own aesthetic, apparent here in the taut pose and concentrated features of the worker checking the supplies.