Weiblicher Akt (recto); Bildnis des Pianisten Roderick Mackey (verso)

‘His artistry as a draughtsman was phenomenal. The assurance of his hand was almost infallible. When he drew, he usually sat on a low stool, the drawing board and sheet on his knees, his right hand (with which he did the drawing) resting on the board. But I also saw him drawing differently, standing in front of the model, his right foot on a low stool. Then he rested the board on his right knee and held it at the top with his left hand, and his drawing hand unsupported placed his pencil on the sheet and drew his lines from the shoulder, as it were. And everything was exactly right. If he happened to get something wrong, which was very rare, he threw the sheet away; he never used an eraser. Schiele only drew from nature’ (O. Benesch, Mein Weg mit Egon Schiele, New York, 1965, p. 25).

Weiblicher Akt/Bildnis des Pianisten Roderick Mackey wonderfully encapsulates not only Egon Schiele’s talent for draughtsmanship, but also unintentionally, the delicate balance of the opposition between art and obscenity within his oeuvre. A double-sided work which combines two of his favourite motifs - portraiture and the female nude, on one side depicts an exquisite portrait of the pianist Roderick Mackey, and on the other, a sensual study of a nude model.

Schiele had created a great stir within Vienna, producing works of art of a previously unseen explicitness which shocked many viewers. The nude model in Weiblicher Akt typifies Schiele’s nudes: a combination of youth and sexuality which symbolised the new energy of the Expressionist movement, its sense of progressiveness and artistic virility, and its rejection of the out-dated official artistic establishment. From 1910, Schiele had begun to experiment with his spatial association with the models he was portraying. Although rarely depicting his physical presence in these works, he implies it through the tightly cropped frame of these studies. In Weiblicher Akt, part of the model’s head and feet disappear off the edge of the sheet, insinuating his close proximity to the model. He does not depict any furniture or sense of an interior, placing all the focus on female figure who looks out and meets the gaze of the viewer. The piece of fabric that partially covers her body emphasises the sensuality of the parts that we do see, rather than serving to protect her sense of modesty, a visual trop that Schiele frequently employed in his depictions of the female body.

Somewhat ironically, the fame and notoriety associated with his name caused him to become one of the most sought after portraitists in the city, as a variety of high society figures clamoured to have their likeness depicted by him. Bildnis des Pianisten Roderick Mackey, a study for an intended such portrait, masterfully captures the likeness of his sitter through only the most essential details. The restrained composition emphasises the intensity of Mackey’s gaze and expression, who, like the female figure on the reverse of the sheet, appears to meet the eye of the viewer. The jagged outline of his jacket articulates the curve of the pianist’s arm, the breadth of his chest, and a sense of his carriage with a single line.

This double-sided composition was originally believed to be two separate works, and was recorded as such in the catalogue raisonné published by Jane Kallir in 1998. Following recent research, Kallir has been able to connect the records on these compositions and confirm them to be two sides of the same sheet.