Mitzi Gierlinger

Executed in 1909, when Egon Schiele was just 19 years old, this intimate drawing of Mitzi Gierlinger belongs to a pivotal year in the artist’s development, and is an early example of the striking and expressive draftsmanship that would come to define Schiele’s work. Mitzi Gierlinger depicts the daughter of Johann Gierlinger, a blacksmith living just outside Vienna, with whom Schiele was lodging at the time. Having left the Vienna Academy earlier that year and unable to afford professional models, Schiele relied largely on family and friends as sitters. Gierlinger later recalled that Schiele drew her many times in the courtyard of the house. Depicted in profile, with her hair piled atop her head and heavy eyelashes cast downward, Mitzi appears to be lost in thought, or perhaps reading as suggested by similar compositions of her from the same year, one of which is in the Minneapolis Institute of Art. The quiet intimacy of the scene situates the viewer as a close observer, privy to a contemplative moment.

The year 1909 marked a crucial turning point in Schiele’s life and career, commonly heralded as the moment of his breakthrough to artistic maturity. Dissatisfied with the conservative aesthetics and teaching of the Vienna Academy, Schiele left the institution to form the Neukunstgruppe, positioning himself in opposition to academic convention. That same year, he was invited by his mentor Gustav Klimt to participate in the Internationale Kunstschau, where his work was exhibited alongside that of established Austrian and international artists, affirming his emergence as a significant new voice in Viennese modernism.

Mitzi Gierlinger captures the artist in this moment of transformation, as his technical confidence and emotional expressiveness began to coalesce into a distinctly personal language, bearing early explorations of elements that would become central to Schiele’s oeuvre. Schiele’s precocious skill as a draftsman is evident; in the portrait he achieves a striking sense of realism through clean, economical line and contour. At the same time, the line varies expressively: Mitzi’s eyebrows and eyelashes are rendered with intensity, drawing attention to her downward gaze, while the loose, searching strokes that describe the stray hairs at her temples and the nape of her neck introduce a sense of tenderness and immediacy. The sitter appears peaceful and self‑contained yet subtly charged with inner tension.

This intimacy invites the viewer to consider the sitter’s internal world, revealing Schiele’s growing sensitivity to the psychological nuance which would define his work. The elevated perspective and tightly cropped composition, suggesting Mitzi is observed from above, are characteristic of Schiele’s drawings from 1909 onward, creating a sense of proximity and shared space between the subject and viewer that reinforces the intimacy which pervades the work.

The expressive charge of the figure is heightened by her isolation within the picture plane. Mitzi Gierlinger is set against an almost entirely blank background, removed from any spatial context. From 1909 onwards, the influence of Gustav Klimt’s densely ornamented backgrounds begins to recede as Schiele’s focus shifts decisively toward the human figure. Increasingly, his subjects are thrust into a pictorial void, where compositional emptiness intensifies vulnerability and emotional presence. This stark opposition between figure and ground would remain a central feature of Schiele’s work throughout his career. Here, the absence of context draws the viewer’s attention entirely to Mitzi’s introspective state. The present work encapsulates the significance of 1909 as a year of metamorphosis in Schiele’s career. Created on the threshold of profound personal and stylistic change, Mitzi Gierlinger captures both the intimacy of a moment and the beginning of a radically new artistic direction.