Egon Schiele

Private Collection, Austria (acquired in the 1950s)
Thence by descent to the present owner

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, London, 1998, no. 2001, illustrated p. 582

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down and hinged to the mount in two places along the upper edge. The edges are slightly unevenly cut. The sheet is very slightly time stained and there is an area of discolouration to the right part of the lower edge. There is a flattened crease to the upper right corner. Otherwise, this work is in overall very good condition.
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Executed in 1917, Egon Schiele’s Frau Sitzend mit Schuhen (Woman Seated with Shoes) is an accomplished and spirited example of the artist’s mature work. After finally being released from his military duties, Schiele returned to Vienna with a refreshed artistic vigour that he expressed to his brother-in-law, Anton Peschka, in January 1917: ‘I want to start anew… until now I have just been preparing the tools’ (quoted in Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, Drawings & Watercolours, London, 2003, p. 384). This was indeed the start of a period of great creative prolificacy and professional stability for Schiele, who had reached both an artistic and emotional maturity. Evident in his drawings of female nudes is a return to classical ideals including a shift towards realism and the depiction of three-dimensional forms that resulted in rounder and softer women. Whilst still maintaining their powerful expressiveness, these nudes do not possess the same erotic anxiety of his earlier works and, instead, radiate a timeless beauty.     

In the present work, Schiele depicts a female nude wearing shoes and stockings, turned away from the viewer as if unaware, with a delightful clarity of line characteristic of his late drawings. Jane Kallir praises Schiele’s draughtsmanship: ‘Few artists in history have managed to express the spirit of their subjects with such economy of means. In his nudes, Schiele strove for purity of form; in his portraits, for purity of being. With the precision of stop-action photography, Schiele could catch a moving body, or the flicker of emotion – a quivering lip, a furrowed brow – as it passed fleetingly across a sitter’s face. In this, he ranks alongside such artists as Hans Holbein as one of the greatest draughstmen of all times. Because Schiele plumbed the very souls of his subjects, his drawings remain as fresh and vital today as they were when made’ (Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, Drawings & Watercolours, London, 2003, p. 442).

The artist’s fascination with depicting the human figure can be dated back to as early as 1910, but his later drawings of women, such as the present work, are truly displays of delectation. Schiele masterfully renders this female nude with crisp lines that artfully capture her casual sensuousness and exemplify the artist’s unique understanding of the human form and character.