• Impressionist/Modern Works on  auction at Christies

    Sale 5467

    Impressionist/Modern Works on Paper

    London

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    21 June 2012

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    • Egon Schiele (1890-1918)
    Lot 187

    Egon Schiele (1890-1918)

    Liebespaar

    Price realised

    GBP 97,250

    Estimate

    GBP 100,000 - GBP 150,000

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    Egon Schiele (1890-1918)
    Liebespaar
    signed and dated 'EGON SCHIELE 1911.' (lower left); inscribed 'A. Peschka Freundlichst!' (lower right)
    pencil on paper
    18 7/8 x 12½ in. (48 x 31.7 cm.)
    Drawn in 1911

    Provenance

    Anton Peschka, Vienna, a gift from the artist.
    Lea Bondi Jaray, Vienna.
    Otto Brill, Vienna & London (with his collector's stamp on the reverse; L.2005a).
    Mr & Mrs Eric Estorick, London.
    Private collection, Great Britain; sale, Sotheby's, London, 9 February 2005, lot 319.
    Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

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    Literature and exhibited

    Literature

    J. Kallir, Egon Schiele, The Complete Works, New York, 1998, no. 967 (illustrated p. 458).


    Exhibited

    Paris, Galerie Octave Negru, Egon Schiele, Dessins et aquarelles, February - April 1976, no. 2 (illustrated).


    Lot Essay

    Liebespaar belongs to an important group of highly erotic drawings and watercolours that the artist executed in 1911, when he first began to explore his sexuality. Specifically, the drawing is one of a series of five pencil drawings depicting an embracing couple that the artist drew in this year, two of which are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Kallir 966 & 969). It is a further tribute to the quality of the drawing that it is dedicated to Anton Peschka, a fellow artist and founder of the Neukunstgruppe, and Schiele's future brother-in-law.
    Schiele was both fascinated and fearful of sex and this is a paradox that many of his works address. As in his other highly sexualised studies from this period, in this fluid and swiftly-executed drawing, Schiele's interest lies predominantly with the heightened state of being of the individual and the expressive pictorial possibilities of rendering this.
    Sex and death were the predominant themes in Schiele's work of this period. For Schiele, as they were for Sigmund Freud and much of Viennese society at this time, the raw underground forces of Eros and Thanatos seemed to be the vital motivating impulses of life bursting through the cracks in the glittering facade of Imperial Viennese culture.

    Other information

    Pre-Lot Text

    THE PROPERTY OF A PATRON OF THE ARTS

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