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PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTION

1890-1918
KNIENDER HALBAKT (KNEELING SEMI-NUDE)

measurements
56.6 by 38.2cm

alternate measurements
22 1/4 by 15in.

Executed in 1911.

signed with the initial S. and dated 1911. (lower right)

gouache, watercolour, pencil and white heightening on paper

PROVENANCE

Julius Martin (possibly acquired from the artist)
Setty Mähly, Switzerland (after 1945)
R. Kaller-Kimche, Inc., New York
Peter Gilbert (sale: Christie's, New York, 15th November 1989, lot 16)
Acquired by the present owner in 1989

LITERATURE

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, The Complete Works, New York, 1998, no. 822, illustrated p. 441

NOTE

Executed in 1911, Kniender Halbakt is a beautiful example of Schiele's early Expressionist work. The young kneeling girl, wearing only a skirt with strong folkloristic colours, is wonderfully depicted showing her blond hair, orange-coloured lips, bare breasts and multicoloured skirt, which are all emphasised by the halo-like embracing line of white gouache characteristic for Schiele's works from this period. As Jane Kallir notes: 'Schiele likes to divide the sheet into discrete color areas, each bounded and determined by the contours of the underlying drawing and treated in a distinctive manner, but whereas in the early part if 1911 these areas are filled more or less solidly, by midyear a multitude of colors is deployed in each moist puddle of pigment. This new command of the medium is used to create more subtle contrasts between compositional components; for example, the painterly complexity of the drapery plays off against flesh barely touched with color' (J. Kallir, op. cit., p. 433).

The year 1910 marks the time when Schiele executed his first ground-breaking Expressionist works. He was scarcely twenty years old when he already achieved artistic maturity. Consequently, he dealt more directly than most artists with the psychological problems of late adolescence and early adulthood, exploring anxieties and obsessions often repressed or sublimated. (see J. Kallir, Egon Schiele, Love and Death (exhibition catalogue), Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, 2005, p. 57). Over the course of 1910, the residual Jugendstil stylisation still evident in Schiele's earlier work was dropped. 'Nevertheless', Jane Kallir notes, 'for the remainder of his career Schiele was wont to contrast expressively nuanced flesh tones with comparatively unmodulated swathes of drapery. Pigment is scored by the flow of water and the tug of the brush in a manner that is more directly responsive to the contours of the surrounding drawing than to the dictates of three-dimensional likeness. Consequently, Schiele's spaces are essentially artistic, as was the flat space in Jugendstil compositions' (op. cit., pp. 37-38).

The tense body language, elegant silhouettes, and carefully constructed use of negative space, still evident in the present work, reflect Schiele's lingering debt to Gustav Klimt. Whereas Klimt had played off the contrast between realistically rendered facial features and ornamental clothing, Schiele now contrasted his subject's Expressionistic face and body with the multicoloured garment and white gouache. The bold tonal combinations of his favoured red-orange, black, and white of early 1911, as seen in Kniender Halbakt, give way to a muted palette employing blue, black, and purple tones in the latter part of that year. As Schiele already used black and purple for the colouring of the model's drapery, the present work can be seen as being executed during an important transitional phase in the year 1911.

Besides the influence of his early mentor Gustav Klimt and Jugendstil, Schiele found another important source of inspiration in the Belgian sculptor George Minne, who was invited by Klimt to exhibit at the influential second Internationale Kunstschau in Vienna in 1909. His sculpture Kneeling Youth of 1898 was shown next to works by Schiele, Kokoschka, Klimt and eleven pictures by Van Gogh. Minne's sculpture had a lasting effect on Schiele, and its Secessionist style and composition is not only recalled in the present work, but also in his oils, such as Kardinal und Nonne (Liebkosung) from 1912. Despite Schiele's exposure to these artists and their works, he developed his very own individual Expressionist artistic language, and the present work is an important example of Schiele's style, reflecting his outstanding position within the development of avant-garde art in Austria.