Egon SCHIELE (1890-1918)
Except otherwise stated, all results include the premium.
Chronology : 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917
Chronology : 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917
Intro
The Viennese Jugendstil deserves its name: Gustav Klimt endeavors to reveal and protect young skilled artists. Egon Schiele is passionate about drawing since childhood and begins to paint on canvas. During the summer of 1909 he exhibits four paintings at the International Kunstschau promoting Klimt's Secessionist movement. Aged 19, he is still a student.
The advances by Klimt in the artistic language are revolutionary and effective. Schiele is inspired by them but early seeks to express his own personality. A self-portrait 74 x 30 cm painted by Egon in late 1909 was sold by Christie's for £ 7.2M on February 2016, lot 31.
Working a portrait in a narrow vertical format is one of Klimt's innovations. Egon reuses this idea while limiting the figuration to the head in the top right and the hands at the lower end of the image, over a dark background.
The young artist is ambitious. The insertion of the head into a gold frame on two and a half sides is an adaptation from the gilded left and right edges of Klimt's Judith. The left edge of Egon's image is decorated with small variously colored rectangles that mark his temporary allegiance to the Wiener Werkstätte.
Schiele's personality is complex. He wants to be recognized and his lively gazes undertakes communication, but his face is heavily rouged. The fingers which are the tool of his growing fame are wide open in a hermetic symbolism that can be a proposal, an explanation or a mime.
The advances by Klimt in the artistic language are revolutionary and effective. Schiele is inspired by them but early seeks to express his own personality. A self-portrait 74 x 30 cm painted by Egon in late 1909 was sold by Christie's for £ 7.2M on February 2016, lot 31.
Working a portrait in a narrow vertical format is one of Klimt's innovations. Egon reuses this idea while limiting the figuration to the head in the top right and the hands at the lower end of the image, over a dark background.
The young artist is ambitious. The insertion of the head into a gold frame on two and a half sides is an adaptation from the gilded left and right edges of Klimt's Judith. The left edge of Egon's image is decorated with small variously colored rectangles that mark his temporary allegiance to the Wiener Werkstätte.
Schiele's personality is complex. He wants to be recognized and his lively gazes undertakes communication, but his face is heavily rouged. The fingers which are the tool of his growing fame are wide open in a hermetic symbolism that can be a proposal, an explanation or a mime.
April 1912 Ich liebe Gegensätze
2023 SOLD for $ 11M by Christie's
Egon Schiele and Wally Neuziel live together since the end of 1911. He is 21 years old and she is 17. She is the main model of his erotic art. The neighbors seek to protect their teenage daughters against the sulphurous influence of the unmarried couple. Egon and Wally leave Vienna and Krumau successively and settle in the village of Neulengbach.
After another complaint Schiele spends 24 days in the prison of Neulengbach, in April 1912. He is not immediately informed about the details of the charges. To counter his despair he obtains the colors and paper to create some art, as Lautrec had done in the asylum in 1899.
This series of thirteen drawings in gouache, watercolor and pencil is made of self portraits with various expressions and anguished titles. Ich liebe Gegensätze, 48 x 32 cm executed on April 24, features the distraught Egon with wide open eyes, tightly wrapped upright in a red sleeveless blanket. Two black buttons remind a fool from the Commedia dell'Arte. The red fabric anticipates the impersonation of the artist as a sex crazy cardinal in a further series of works.
This drawing had been spoliated by the Nazis in 1938 and restituted in 2023. It was sold for $ 11M from a lower estimate of $ 1.5M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 5 B.
His conviction was limited to an offense against morality for exhibiting erotic drawings in a place accessible to young children. He was condemned to a fine and the judge set fire to one of the indecent drawings.
After another complaint Schiele spends 24 days in the prison of Neulengbach, in April 1912. He is not immediately informed about the details of the charges. To counter his despair he obtains the colors and paper to create some art, as Lautrec had done in the asylum in 1899.
This series of thirteen drawings in gouache, watercolor and pencil is made of self portraits with various expressions and anguished titles. Ich liebe Gegensätze, 48 x 32 cm executed on April 24, features the distraught Egon with wide open eyes, tightly wrapped upright in a red sleeveless blanket. Two black buttons remind a fool from the Commedia dell'Arte. The red fabric anticipates the impersonation of the artist as a sex crazy cardinal in a further series of works.
This drawing had been spoliated by the Nazis in 1938 and restituted in 2023. It was sold for $ 11M from a lower estimate of $ 1.5M by Christie's on November 9, 2023, lot 5 B.
His conviction was limited to an offense against morality for exhibiting erotic drawings in a place accessible to young children. He was condemned to a fine and the judge set fire to one of the indecent drawings.
#AuctionUpdate: From our 20th Century Evening Sale, Egon Schiele’s ‘Ich liebe Gegensätze' realizes $11M — almost 5X its high estimate pic.twitter.com/kZGncSXCcm
— Christie's (@ChristiesInc) November 10, 2023
end of 1912 Triestiner Fischerboot
2019 SOLD for £ 10.7M by Sotheby's
Once out of the Neulengbach ordeal, Egon Schiele feels the need to change air. In May he spends a few days in Trieste, a place he loved, in the pleasant atmosphere of the fishing port.
On February 26, 2019, Sotheby's sold for £ 10.7M from a lower estimate of £ 6M Triestiner Fischerboot, lot 9, oil on canvas certainly painted in his studio in Vienna around the end of 1912.
On a square format 70 x 70 cm, the composition is symmetrical and flat. The boat is seen from the front, in a rather naive drawing and without perspective. The colors are rich and saturated, in the morbid style that Schiele had already practiced.
The perspective is nevertheless present by the water that deviates in front of the boat as if she was rushing onto the observer. At the foreground of the boat two anchor points increase the threat of this subject that could have been peaceful. Black in a bright red orbit, they are on both sides of the main axis like the intimidating taotie of the Chinese liturgical bronzes.
The logical continuation of Triestiner Fischerboot is the series of haunted cityscapes of Krumau in which no human presence is needed to express the artist's feelings. Until 1912 Schiele could have become a cursed artist. This is not the case : fame comes to him as early as 1913 with his first solo exhibition.
Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
On February 26, 2019, Sotheby's sold for £ 10.7M from a lower estimate of £ 6M Triestiner Fischerboot, lot 9, oil on canvas certainly painted in his studio in Vienna around the end of 1912.
On a square format 70 x 70 cm, the composition is symmetrical and flat. The boat is seen from the front, in a rather naive drawing and without perspective. The colors are rich and saturated, in the morbid style that Schiele had already practiced.
The perspective is nevertheless present by the water that deviates in front of the boat as if she was rushing onto the observer. At the foreground of the boat two anchor points increase the threat of this subject that could have been peaceful. Black in a bright red orbit, they are on both sides of the main axis like the intimidating taotie of the Chinese liturgical bronzes.
The logical continuation of Triestiner Fischerboot is the series of haunted cityscapes of Krumau in which no human presence is needed to express the artist's feelings. Until 1912 Schiele could have become a cursed artist. This is not the case : fame comes to him as early as 1913 with his first solo exhibition.
Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's.
#AuctionUpdate We’re sailing away with Egon Schiele’s uniquely modernist depiction of a fishing boat in Trieste. Offered at auction for the first time, this square-format painting brings £10.7 million #SothebysImpMod pic.twitter.com/F0CVexb5uK
— Sotheby's (@Sothebys) February 26, 2019
1913 Selbstbildnis mit Modell
2013 SOLD for $ 11.3M by Christie's
The 24 days spent in prison in 1912 by Egon Schiele after an exhibition of sexually explicit drawings exacerbated his own mysticism. Concerned that the deep roots of his art were fully misunderstood by everybody, he went to charge religion and bourgeois in an implacable expressionist style that anticipates by a few years Grosz and Dix.
In 1912 a post imprisonment works features a red dressed cardinal and a black dressed young nun kneeling in bare legs for a carnal embrace.
They are indeed a self portrait of the artist with Wally. Around the same time Egon starts associating him with the Christian martyrs by representing himself as a tonsured monk in ecstasy with an emaciated face.
Painted in 1913, Selbstbildnis mit Modell is another double figure of Egon and Wally. They are physically separated and do not look at one another. An elongated arm of the man is reaching the waiting woman in an intention of communion whose ritual can only be understood by the artist.
Conceived as a 70 x 240 cm fragment for a monumental frieze that would highlight the prophet artist as a supreme guru and his muse as the first converted, this oil on canvas somehow reminds the monastic frescoes of the Renaissance. It was sold for $ 11.3M from a lower estimate of $ 5M by Christie's on May 8, 2013, lot 37. The frieze was not executed.
In 1912 a post imprisonment works features a red dressed cardinal and a black dressed young nun kneeling in bare legs for a carnal embrace.
They are indeed a self portrait of the artist with Wally. Around the same time Egon starts associating him with the Christian martyrs by representing himself as a tonsured monk in ecstasy with an emaciated face.
Painted in 1913, Selbstbildnis mit Modell is another double figure of Egon and Wally. They are physically separated and do not look at one another. An elongated arm of the man is reaching the waiting woman in an intention of communion whose ritual can only be understood by the artist.
Conceived as a 70 x 240 cm fragment for a monumental frieze that would highlight the prophet artist as a supreme guru and his muse as the first converted, this oil on canvas somehow reminds the monastic frescoes of the Renaissance. It was sold for $ 11.3M from a lower estimate of $ 5M by Christie's on May 8, 2013, lot 37. The frieze was not executed.
Tote Stadt
1
1913 Die kleine Stadt
2018 SOLD for $ 24.6M by Sotheby's
The nervous lines in the bodies of Schiele's young mistresses announce their future decay but they remain alive. This anguished artist must find a means for expressing the mortality. From 1912 he uses as another theme the small town of Krumau in southern Bohemia where his mother was born.
Krumau is a medieval town incompatible with the modernist and socially advanced trends of the artist. It is his Tote Stadt, even more morbid in his memories and imagination, with no attempt for an accurate topographical representation. Autumn adds its decrepitude.
The panorama is seen from above, an angle of view that Schiele liked also in his portraits. The houses are in close ranks, schematized like on an engraving of the Renaissance. Much later, this vestige of ancient times will be listed in the World Heritage list of the UNESCO. The river that flows in the foreground or away is the Moldau.
Die kleine Stadt II, oil and black crayon on canvas 90 x 90 cm painted bt Egon Schiele, was sold for $ 24.6M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on November 12, 2018, lot 19.
Painted in 1913, this opus also titled Dämmernde Stadt (city in twilight) is made in a restrained palette of rich dark tones with a few lit windows. It is one of the earliest paintings in the expressionist series of Krumau townscapes. A square format for the landscapes had been previously practiced by Klimt.
Some relation with the neo-Gothic art of his time may be considered.
Krumau is a medieval town incompatible with the modernist and socially advanced trends of the artist. It is his Tote Stadt, even more morbid in his memories and imagination, with no attempt for an accurate topographical representation. Autumn adds its decrepitude.
The panorama is seen from above, an angle of view that Schiele liked also in his portraits. The houses are in close ranks, schematized like on an engraving of the Renaissance. Much later, this vestige of ancient times will be listed in the World Heritage list of the UNESCO. The river that flows in the foreground or away is the Moldau.
Die kleine Stadt II, oil and black crayon on canvas 90 x 90 cm painted bt Egon Schiele, was sold for $ 24.6M from a lower estimate of $ 12M by Sotheby's on November 12, 2018, lot 19.
Painted in 1913, this opus also titled Dämmernde Stadt (city in twilight) is made in a restrained palette of rich dark tones with a few lit windows. It is one of the earliest paintings in the expressionist series of Krumau townscapes. A square format for the landscapes had been previously practiced by Klimt.
Some relation with the neo-Gothic art of his time may be considered.
2
1914 Vorstadt
2011 SOLD for £ 24.7M by Sotheby's
It may happen that bright splashes of color give a hope of happiness to the dreary cityscapes of Egon Schiele.
An oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm executed in 1914 was sold for £ 24.7M by Sotheby's on June 22, 2011 after a Nazi restitution case. It is titled Vorstadt II (Häuser mit bunter Wäsche). On the banks of the river, some laundry is exposed.
An oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm executed in 1914 was sold for £ 24.7M by Sotheby's on June 22, 2011 after a Nazi restitution case. It is titled Vorstadt II (Häuser mit bunter Wäsche). On the banks of the river, some laundry is exposed.
3
1915 Einzelne Häuser
2006 SOLD for $ 22.5M by Christie's
Everything goes wrong for the idealist Egon Schiele. The outbreak of war is perceived as a break with the past without an opening to the future. He goes to marry Edith but Wally violently refuses the household of three on which he was daydreaming. He is frustrated in his erotic desires and in the recognition of his self-proclaimed genius.
Egon is not apt for an active military service but is mobilized in an office position in June 1915 three days after marrying Edith. Einzelne Häuser, oil on canvas 110 x 140 cm painted in the darkest moments of this summer 1915, was sold for $ 22.5M by Christie's on November 8, 2006, lot 60. It passed at Christie's on June 27, 2017, lot 60.
In front of an insignificant landscape structured in horizontal lines, the big house is the main character. Its gloomy texture announces an upcoming decay. It rises like a towering and outdated inquisitor in the middle of the scenery. It has already lost any trace of life.
Egon is not apt for an active military service but is mobilized in an office position in June 1915 three days after marrying Edith. Einzelne Häuser, oil on canvas 110 x 140 cm painted in the darkest moments of this summer 1915, was sold for $ 22.5M by Christie's on November 8, 2006, lot 60. It passed at Christie's on June 27, 2017, lot 60.
In front of an insignificant landscape structured in horizontal lines, the big house is the main character. Its gloomy texture announces an upcoming decay. It rises like a towering and outdated inquisitor in the middle of the scenery. It has already lost any trace of life.
Des œuvres majeures de #Beckmann, #Picasso, #Schiele et #VanGogh sont à retrouver à Londres lors de la semaine 20TH CENTURY du 26 au 28 juin pic.twitter.com/j2n8u9IWQq
— Christie's Paris (@christiesparis) June 13, 2017
4
1916 Krumauer Landschaft
2003 SOLD for £ 12.7M by Sotheby's
Krumauer Landschaft, subtitled Stadt und Fluss, oil, tempera and colored chalk on canvas 110 x 140 cm painted in 1916 by Egon Schiele, was sold for £ 12.7M from a lower estimate of £ 5M by Sotheby's on June 23, 2003, lot 6, after being restituted from a Nazi looting. The image is shared by Wikimedia.
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1914 Herbstsonne
2006 SOLD for £ 11.8M by Christie's
Egon Schiele was a hypersensitive artist obsessed by a presence of death within life and by the concept of an eternal vitality despite the decay. Another melancholic crisis happened in 1913, looking for where his late father could have been. The father had died nine years earlier while the boy was 14.
Schiele used to paint landscapes by memory, not by a direct observation, as it is also evidenced in his Krumau cityscapes. Herbstsonne, so titled by the artist, was not made in an autumn but in March 1914. Also its sunflowers do not turn towards the sun as they do in nature.
This oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm displays a sunset through a topless and bottomless column of sunflowers. The sun has the pale hue of autumn in a chilled banded sky. The fall is indeed a promise of wilting for sunflowers while the leaves are drying.
The melancholy suffered at that time by the artist is sufficient to appreciate that theme without referring to some prophecy of the apocalypse of Europe in the world war. The sunflower had been an anthropomorphic symbol for Schiele from his early artistic maturity. The deadly Herbstsonne was his ultimate oil painting on that theme.
Herbstsonne was considered as irremediably lost after being confiscated by the Nazis in 1942. Restituted to the heirs of its spoliated owner 64 years later, it was sold for £ 11.8M from a lower estimate of £ 4M by Christie's on June 20, 2006, lot 7.
Schiele used to paint landscapes by memory, not by a direct observation, as it is also evidenced in his Krumau cityscapes. Herbstsonne, so titled by the artist, was not made in an autumn but in March 1914. Also its sunflowers do not turn towards the sun as they do in nature.
This oil on canvas 100 x 120 cm displays a sunset through a topless and bottomless column of sunflowers. The sun has the pale hue of autumn in a chilled banded sky. The fall is indeed a promise of wilting for sunflowers while the leaves are drying.
The melancholy suffered at that time by the artist is sufficient to appreciate that theme without referring to some prophecy of the apocalypse of Europe in the world war. The sunflower had been an anthropomorphic symbol for Schiele from his early artistic maturity. The deadly Herbstsonne was his ultimate oil painting on that theme.
Herbstsonne was considered as irremediably lost after being confiscated by the Nazis in 1942. Restituted to the heirs of its spoliated owner 64 years later, it was sold for £ 11.8M from a lower estimate of £ 4M by Christie's on June 20, 2006, lot 7.
1915 Liebespaar
2013 SOLD for £ 7.9M by Sotheby's
The world seen by Egon Schiele is unbearable, but the young man is trying to communicate. People are ugly. He shows his own ugliness in his many self-portraits. Life is probably meaningless : the art of Schiele has no limits, nor in provocation, or in derision, or in obscenity.
I do not know if another artist went as far as Schiele to show himself so unfriendly. He does not smile. The twisting of his body creates discomfort. His eyes, straight or angled, are too incisive for his communication to enable a response.
His muse Wally is also shown as an ageless figure. However, when they met in 1911, she was only 17 years old.
Schiele was also complicated and tormented within his private life. In 1915, he announces to Wally that he wants to marry, but especially not with her. Furious, she leaves. He then executes one of his most dramatic paintings, Death and the Maiden. The bending Death presses the kneeling girl. The stature of Egon and the face of Wally are recognizable in these two characters.
A drawing in gouache, watercolor and pencil sold for £ 7.9M from a lower estimate of £ 6.5M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2013 shows a similar scene. Wally, at mid-body, is by evidence standing on her knees, embracing the belt of her standing lover. This work is clearly identified as a self-portrait. Egon looks at Wally. The eyes of the young woman are distraught.
Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's, featuring the three Schiele drawings listed in that sale :
I do not know if another artist went as far as Schiele to show himself so unfriendly. He does not smile. The twisting of his body creates discomfort. His eyes, straight or angled, are too incisive for his communication to enable a response.
His muse Wally is also shown as an ageless figure. However, when they met in 1911, she was only 17 years old.
Schiele was also complicated and tormented within his private life. In 1915, he announces to Wally that he wants to marry, but especially not with her. Furious, she leaves. He then executes one of his most dramatic paintings, Death and the Maiden. The bending Death presses the kneeling girl. The stature of Egon and the face of Wally are recognizable in these two characters.
A drawing in gouache, watercolor and pencil sold for £ 7.9M from a lower estimate of £ 6.5M by Sotheby's on February 5, 2013 shows a similar scene. Wally, at mid-body, is by evidence standing on her knees, embracing the belt of her standing lover. This work is clearly identified as a self-portrait. Egon looks at Wally. The eyes of the young woman are distraught.
Please watch the video shared by Sotheby's, featuring the three Schiele drawings listed in that sale :
1917 Selbstbildniss mit kariertem Hemd
2007 SOLD for $ 11.4M by Sotheby's
Egon Schiele would like to be the pioneer of a new art expressing the deepest of human nature that he observes without complacency up to pornography and self-derision. The self portrait is his ultimate art.
Selbstbildniss mit kariertem Hemd is an example that did not need any nudity. This gouache, watercolor and black crayon 45 x 30 cm made in 1917 was sold for $ 11.4M from a lower estimate of $ 4.5M by Sotheby's on November 7, 2007, lot 3.
The expression is an expectation, in contradiction with the head fully tilted on a shoulder as if he desired to perform some mannered absurdity from real life. The right hand is raised.
This piece has the characteristic spontaneity of a drawing without retraced lines. The checkered shirt and the skin are enhanced by bright colors. In contrast the torso is left blank.
Selbstbildniss mit kariertem Hemd is an example that did not need any nudity. This gouache, watercolor and black crayon 45 x 30 cm made in 1917 was sold for $ 11.4M from a lower estimate of $ 4.5M by Sotheby's on November 7, 2007, lot 3.
The expression is an expectation, in contradiction with the head fully tilted on a shoulder as if he desired to perform some mannered absurdity from real life. The right hand is raised.
This piece has the characteristic spontaneity of a drawing without retraced lines. The checkered shirt and the skin are enhanced by bright colors. In contrast the torso is left blank.
