Egon Schiele

Estate of the Artist
Anton Peschka, Vienna (possibly)
Heinrich Rieger, Vienna
Hilde Ziegler, Austria (the sitter)
Private Collection, Austria (by descent from the above; sale: Im Kinsky, Vienna, 13th-15th November 2012, lot 926)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owners

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, taped to the mount intermittently along the upper edge and floating in the mount. There is a repaired tear (approx. 2cm) to the centre of the lower edge and a further tear (approx. 1cm.) towards the lower part of the left edge. There is an artist's pin hole to the centre of the lower edge and some faint mount staining along all four edges due to previous mounting. There is a very small paper loss to the upper edge towards the upper right corner. This work is in overall good condition.
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This elegant and striking portrait of Hilde Ziegler marks a stark departure from the often highly eroticised drawings for which Egon Schiele became renowned during his career. Hilde was a student at the girl’s college of Dr. Eugenie Schwarzwald, a pedagogue who promoted gender equality and employed such prestigious teachers as Oskar Kokoschka and Arnold Schönberg. The young student asked Schiele for a drawing to feature in the student newspaper, and the artist decided that Hilde would be the ideal subject.

Within Mӓdchenportrӓt (Hilde Ziegler), she is portrayed turning slightly sideways, her hair loosely tied up and absently looking out into the distance. She appears innocent, unaware of the artist and fully immersed in her own thoughts, and at the same time, one can sense an inquisitive active mind. Schiele omitted any background or scene that could distract from his subject: with only a few confident lines he succeeded in capturing a vivid and astonishingly life-like impression.

Mӓdchenportrӓt (Hilde Ziegler) was created during a time of significant creative development for Schiele. The beginning of 1918 was defined by his overwhelming success at the Wiener Secession exhibition and Schiele’s public rise to become one of Austria’s leading artists. In the last two years of his life, Schiele enjoyed one of his most productive and prosperous periods and produced some of his most incisive portraiture. He was supported by patrons, and his calendar was full with portrait commissions. Jane Kallir notes that ‘the artist’s best late portraits seem to capture the sitter at the split second when his or her soul becomes visible’ (Jane Kallir, Patronage and Portraiture in the World of Egon Schiele, in: Alessandra Comini, Egon Schiele, Portraits, New York, 2014, p. 80). Schiele succeeded with Hilde’s portrayal and it seems that she too was pleased with the result. Shortly after Schiele’s death, she acquired the drawing and it remained in her family for almost a century.

This lot is sold pursuant to a settlement agreement between the current owners and the heirs of Heinrich Rieger. Dr Rieger was a Viennese dentist, who often accepted works of art in lieu of payment from his patients, one of these being Egon Schiele.