.jpg?w=1)
拍品專文
Schiele was summoned on 13 April 1912 to the police station in the Austrian town of Neulengbach where he was residing, and was detained on suspicion of morals offenses based on the accusations of the father of a girl who had modeled for the artist. The trial took place in early May, during which a judge publicly burned one of Schiele's drawings. The artist was found guilty, but his sentence took into account time already served, so that he was released on 7 May. These events had a profound emotional effect on Schiele, and caused financial hardships as well, with the result that this year was the most difficult of the artist's life.
The famous prison watercolor self-portraits show a broken, persecuted man; however, these terrible circumstances notwithstanding, Schiele's draftsmanship in the latter part of the year came to display a new vigor. "Perhaps the most significant change is the switch to softer leads, which produce distinctly darker, bolder lines. The tentative delicacy of early 1912 vanishes." (J. Kallir, op. cit., p. 461). While the subject of the present drawing is avowedly a prostitute, Schiele's girlfriend Wally was his most frequent model in the latter half of 1912, although he often disguised her identity.
The present drawing was bequeathed to the present owner by the late Alice M. Kaplan, one-time president of the American Federation of the Arts, who began collecting works of Schiele in 1959, and went on to assemble one the most important collections of the artist's works in America. On 7 November 1995 Christie's New York sold a Schiele self-portrait (Kallir, no. 1668) from Mrs. Kaplan's collection for $1,872,500, then a record price for a work on paper by the artist.
The famous prison watercolor self-portraits show a broken, persecuted man; however, these terrible circumstances notwithstanding, Schiele's draftsmanship in the latter part of the year came to display a new vigor. "Perhaps the most significant change is the switch to softer leads, which produce distinctly darker, bolder lines. The tentative delicacy of early 1912 vanishes." (J. Kallir, op. cit., p. 461). While the subject of the present drawing is avowedly a prostitute, Schiele's girlfriend Wally was his most frequent model in the latter half of 1912, although he often disguised her identity.
The present drawing was bequeathed to the present owner by the late Alice M. Kaplan, one-time president of the American Federation of the Arts, who began collecting works of Schiele in 1959, and went on to assemble one the most important collections of the artist's works in America. On 7 November 1995 Christie's New York sold a Schiele self-portrait (Kallir, no. 1668) from Mrs. Kaplan's collection for $1,872,500, then a record price for a work on paper by the artist.