Frau Sitzend mit Schuhen

Created just a year before the tragic end of Egon Schiele’s extraordinary career in 1918, Frau Sitzend Mit Schuchen is a testament to the mastery of subject and medium that Schiele had attained by the young age of 28. The present work offers a glimpse into a productive period of growing commercial success and renown which is widely understood to be the zenith of the artist’s career.

After his release from military duties, Schiele– who had painted and drawn relatively infrequently over the preceding years– returned to Vienna, turning his attention to the development of his artistic career with a renewed enthusiasm which 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 J. Kallir, Egon Schiele, Drawings & Watercolours, London, 2003, p. 384).

The artist’s fascination with the human form can be seen as early as 1910, but the nervous eroticism and sharpness of his former needle-like mark-making was eschewed by 1917 in favour of a thicker and more confident line, which imbued his models with a strong physicality. Where earlier works stretched skin tightly over angular, distorted figures in an exploration of the artist’s own angst, Schiele’s later nudes are brought to life by the naturalistic treatment of their rounded, fleshy forms, which exude a calm yet powerfully sensual presence.

In the present work, Schiele depicts a seated nude with remarkable confidence and technical control. The model’s face is turned away, but her relaxed posture opens her body to the viewer, creating a composition which is at once intimate and suffused with formal sophistication. Schiele’s command of the medium is evident in his poignant clarity of line which is harmoniously balanced with his delicate use of shade to sparingly render the contours of the model’s chest, suggesting the undulation of her collarbones to the viewer. The presence of her shoes and stockings emphasise her nudity, which radiates a classical beauty whilst maintaining the uninhibited sexuality at the core of Schiele's oeuvre.

The immediacy of the medium, and Schiele's gift as a draughtsman, create a heightened sense of proximity between the subject and the viewer. Although Schiele rarely depicted his physical presence in such works, his proximity is implied through tightly cropped framing. In the present work, the model’s foot disappears from the picture plane, drawing the eye of the viewer closer to the heart of the composition, creating a sense of shared space. The emptiness of the sheet, devoid of any spatial or temporal context, places sole focus on the model.

Frau Sitzend Mit Schuchen powerfully demonstrates Schiele’s mature ability to bring together the internal and bodily realities of his subjects with striking intimacy. Through this balance of matter and subject, the artist portrays the ineffable characteristics of human nature. Noting this striking ability, Jane Kallir has observed, ‘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 the sitter’s face. Because Schiele plumbed the very souls of his subjects, his drawings remain as fresh and vital today as they were when made’ (J. Kallir, Egon Schiele, Drawings & Watercolours, London, 2003, p. 442).

In the present work, the soft curls at the nape of the sitter’s neck, the slight wrinkles at the ankle of her stocking and the slouch in her shoulders and abdomen convey a sense of the figure’s nature and the artist's impression of her in a moment of repose. Captured in a fleeting instance of self-absorption, the averted gaze of the model is not the demure pose of a subjugated odalisque, but an indication of the consciousness of the subject, inviting the viewer to consider what has occupied her attention, and, in turn, comprehend her internal world.