Lot Essay
The present work is one of a series of watercolours executed in 1910 depicting street urchins (Kallir, nos. 409-415). Schiele found that they could be convinced to pose for a few coins, or a handful of sweets. As his friend the artist Albert Paris von Gütersloh recalled: "there were always two or three smaller or larger girls in Schiele's studio; girls from the neighbourhood, from the street: some ugly, some attractive...They feared nothing from the paper that lay next to Schiele on the sofa, and the young man was always playing with pencil or the brush...Suddenly, and although he didn't appear to have been paying attention at all, he would say very softly...'stop!' And now, as if under the spell of his magic, they froze as they were - lying, standing, kneeling, relaxing - as though they had been banished to timelessness or covered with lava, and then, in a twinkling, brought back to life. That is the immortal moment in which the transitory is transformed into the eternity of art." (see J. Kallir, op. cit., p. 75).