Albin Egger-Lienz

Private Collection, Vienna, 1902 (grandfather of the current owner)

Innsbruck, Exhibition of Living Tyrolean artists, 1902

Franz Reichart (ed)., Exhibition of Living Tyrolean artists, exh. cat., Innsbruck 1902, no. 36a¹

_{1 based on the price information for no. 36a which matches the price information on the reverse of the work (80 Kronen)}

The work “Studienkopf (Study Head)” presented in photographs is a characteristic study for “Das Kreuz (The Cross)” (1898-1901, Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Innsbruck) by the important Tyrolean painter Albin Egger-Lienz (1868-1926), which he probably painted in East Tyrol in the summer of 1900 (see catalog raisonné Kirschl 1996, vol. II, M 132 - M 149, pp. 516-518, M 642, p. 623, M 676, M 677, p. 625). He used the present portrait study for the “Sensenmann (Grim Reaper)”, the figure in the foreground. It is probably not the same as the “last large study, the Grim Reaper” (letter from Egger-Lienz to his wife Laura dated 17.8.1900), which Kirschl notes under catalog raisonné no. M 148.

The physiognomy and expression of the depicted farmer are rendered with a sure feel for the essentials: the striking face with the firmly determined brown eyes, the equally determined mouth and the powerful “eagle nose”, all embedded in a tonal, brownish coloring, from which the light bridge of the nose shines out most strongly. In the finished painting “The Cross”, the painter has accentuated the “Grim Reaper” even more expressively than in the present study. The “Studie zum Sensenmann in ‘Das Kreuz’” with the catalog raisonné no. M 642 corresponds more to an earlier draft of the picture.

To summarize, it can be said that The “Study Head” can be regarded as a valid early work by Egger-Lienz, as one of the works with which he embarked on his very own path from realism to modernism and thus became one of the most important representatives of the art of the first half of the 20th century in Austria.

This catalogue entry was written by Mr. Erich Mair who we are grateful to for his assistance in cataloguing this work.