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Lot Essay
Liegender Akt was drawn in 1910, a year that the scholar Jane Kallir has referred to as the “decisive turning point in Egon Schiele’s creative development” (Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors, London, 2003, p. 70). Barely twenty, Schiele evinced an aesthetic precocity not often seen as he began to differentiate himself from his mentor, Gustav Klimt, whose decorative style he had previously emulated. The young artist had begun to distil his distinctive form of Expressionism, an approach informed by his training at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna as well as his various Jugendstil experiments. Central to Schiele’s aesthetic transformation were his emotive, fluid lines, as seen in works such as Liegender Akt, as well as his reliance on negative space, which helped to structure his portraits. He abandoned the modelling and use of charcoal that had characterized his earlier figure studies and instead began to use pencil almost exclusively. “By and large,” notes Kallir, “his strokes are now surer, with less retracing of principal outlines” (Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, London, 1998, p. 391).
The subject of the present work—that of the reclining nude—was also new to Schiele. Although he would have attended life drawing classes at the academy, the figure had not yet ascended to its primary position within his practice. Up until this point, much of Schiele’s output concentrated on the landscape. Following his departure from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, however, he began to demonstrate an almost obsessive interest in the expressive potential of the nude body, inspired, in part, by an interest in dancers such as Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis, who had travelled to Vienna to perform. In many of Schiele’s new works, including a series of five large canvases begun that year, the artist himself served as the model. Indeed, a reliance on the self-portrait unites his works from 1910, and in these depictions of his body, Schiele was able to push the limits of his output in a manner not possible for a commissioned portrait.
Liegender Akt exemplifies the graphic fluency that Schiele had achieved by 1910. Described with a simple, delicate line, the young woman leans backwards, one hand tucked behind her head, the other resting upon her thigh. On her side, a baby nestles into the covers, its peaceful visage at odds with the protagonist’s penetrating gaze. For the artist, the body may have been "a source of ecstatic pleasure, but it [was] also be an affliction to be endured," a vessel for desire, dread, pathos, and disquiet (K. Johnson, "The Wider, Not Wilder, Egon Schiele" in New York Times, 21 October 2005).
The subject of the present work—that of the reclining nude—was also new to Schiele. Although he would have attended life drawing classes at the academy, the figure had not yet ascended to its primary position within his practice. Up until this point, much of Schiele’s output concentrated on the landscape. Following his departure from the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, however, he began to demonstrate an almost obsessive interest in the expressive potential of the nude body, inspired, in part, by an interest in dancers such as Isadora Duncan and Ruth St Denis, who had travelled to Vienna to perform. In many of Schiele’s new works, including a series of five large canvases begun that year, the artist himself served as the model. Indeed, a reliance on the self-portrait unites his works from 1910, and in these depictions of his body, Schiele was able to push the limits of his output in a manner not possible for a commissioned portrait.
Liegender Akt exemplifies the graphic fluency that Schiele had achieved by 1910. Described with a simple, delicate line, the young woman leans backwards, one hand tucked behind her head, the other resting upon her thigh. On her side, a baby nestles into the covers, its peaceful visage at odds with the protagonist’s penetrating gaze. For the artist, the body may have been "a source of ecstatic pleasure, but it [was] also be an affliction to be endured," a vessel for desire, dread, pathos, and disquiet (K. Johnson, "The Wider, Not Wilder, Egon Schiele" in New York Times, 21 October 2005).