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Lot Essay
With its unusual viewpoint and suggestively intimate pose, Hockender weiblicher Torso (recto); Weiblicher Halbakt (verso) illustrates the daring nature of Egon Schiele’s ground-breaking studies of the female figure, an artistic obsession which occupied him throughout his short-lived career. Created in 1912, a year of great personal turmoil and upheaval for Schiele, the composition focuses on the sinuous form of an anonymous female model as she crouches before the artist, her skirt raised high above her knees to reveal the point at which her silky black stockings give way to the soft flesh of her thighs. Delineating her contours in energetic, febrile lines, Schiele adopts a startling, bold cropping effect in which the woman’s head disappears off the page, concentrating our gaze on the generous volumes of her body, the soft folds of fabric in her dress, and the dynamic energy that underpins her movements as she poses for the artist. Imbued with a subtle eroticism and sensuality, the scene reveals the subtle shifts which were occurring in Schiele’s approach to the figure during this period, as he began to temper the heady sexuality and scandalous nature of his images in the wake of his imprisonment and trial for indecency during the opening months of the year.
Executed in delicately thin layers of watercolour pigment, Hockender weiblicher Torso also reveals Schiele’s growing confidence with the medium at this time, as he began to allow his paints a greater role in the construction of the figure. Retaining a sense of the fluidity and the bold movements of the artist’s paintbrush as it danced across the page, Schiele allows the washes of colour to bleed over the contours of his pencil drawing underneath, lending the outline of his sitter’s body a more rounded, organic, undulating character that highlights the sheer liquidity of the paint. As with the majority of his figure studies of this period, the almost sculptural physicality of the model’s body is contrasted against the white void of the blank page surrounding her, the details of the setting subsumed by the artist’s need to capture the vital living nature of the human form before him. Schiele’s style and the focus of his subject matter was, in part, inspired by the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, whose work he had first encountered in 1909. While his masterly use of pencil, watercolour and gouache finds parallels in the French artist’s work, it was Toulouse-Lautrec’s unerring studies of the modern female body and intriguing explorations of sexuality which had the most lasting effect on the young Schiele.
In Hockender weiblicher Torso, Schiele focuses his eye on the scintillating combination of high heels and stockings, a frequent obsession of his which made its way into numerous paintings and drawings of this period. Unlike other examples of his more provocative and explicit works depicting partially undressed women, it is the tiniest hint of skin between her stockings and petticoats, the suggestion of what is to come if the sitter’s slow striptease continues, that lends Hockender weiblicher Torso its captivating power. A second drawing, Weiblicher Halbakt, is visible on the verso of the sheet, offering a more explicit view of a young woman as she reclines before the artist, her arms thrown above her head to reveal the entire length of her nude torso. Recording her delicate features and the soft curves of her lithe body with just a handful of abbreviated, flowing lines, Schiele imbues her form with an inherent grace, even though the unusual angle and foreshortening lends a certain awkwardness to her pose. Together, these two works illustrate the innovative direction of Schiele’s probing vision, as he explored the ways in which implicit and explicit nudity could generate different tenors of erotic tension in his compositions.
The present work was acquired directly from the artist by Dr. Alfred Spitzer, a Viennese lawyer who acted as Schiele’s attorney and later the executor of his estate. Spitzer had begun collecting art in his thirties, and often represented artists as part of his practice, frequently taking payment for his services in works of art by his clients. This had a lasting influence on the focus of his collection, which increasingly shifted towards contemporary art through these connections with living artists—according to his daughters, at its height the collection comprised around 800 works of art, which Spitzer displayed in his law firm and at the family home. When Spitzer died in April 1923, at the age of 62, the Internationale Sammler-Zeitung dedicated an extensive obituary to the ‘collector and art lover.’ His collection passed to his wife and, after her death in 1930, to his two daughters Hanna and Edith. After the Anschluss in March 1938, the two sisters fled Vienna, both eventually settling in America. They were both able to take a part of their father's art collection with them, though a number of artworks were allegedly lost as the result of a direct bombing of the depot where they were stored in Vienna. Hockender weiblicher Torso remained with Hanna until 1966; she later bequeathed a number of works from the collection of the lawyer Alfred Spitzer to the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.
Executed in delicately thin layers of watercolour pigment, Hockender weiblicher Torso also reveals Schiele’s growing confidence with the medium at this time, as he began to allow his paints a greater role in the construction of the figure. Retaining a sense of the fluidity and the bold movements of the artist’s paintbrush as it danced across the page, Schiele allows the washes of colour to bleed over the contours of his pencil drawing underneath, lending the outline of his sitter’s body a more rounded, organic, undulating character that highlights the sheer liquidity of the paint. As with the majority of his figure studies of this period, the almost sculptural physicality of the model’s body is contrasted against the white void of the blank page surrounding her, the details of the setting subsumed by the artist’s need to capture the vital living nature of the human form before him. Schiele’s style and the focus of his subject matter was, in part, inspired by the art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, whose work he had first encountered in 1909. While his masterly use of pencil, watercolour and gouache finds parallels in the French artist’s work, it was Toulouse-Lautrec’s unerring studies of the modern female body and intriguing explorations of sexuality which had the most lasting effect on the young Schiele.
In Hockender weiblicher Torso, Schiele focuses his eye on the scintillating combination of high heels and stockings, a frequent obsession of his which made its way into numerous paintings and drawings of this period. Unlike other examples of his more provocative and explicit works depicting partially undressed women, it is the tiniest hint of skin between her stockings and petticoats, the suggestion of what is to come if the sitter’s slow striptease continues, that lends Hockender weiblicher Torso its captivating power. A second drawing, Weiblicher Halbakt, is visible on the verso of the sheet, offering a more explicit view of a young woman as she reclines before the artist, her arms thrown above her head to reveal the entire length of her nude torso. Recording her delicate features and the soft curves of her lithe body with just a handful of abbreviated, flowing lines, Schiele imbues her form with an inherent grace, even though the unusual angle and foreshortening lends a certain awkwardness to her pose. Together, these two works illustrate the innovative direction of Schiele’s probing vision, as he explored the ways in which implicit and explicit nudity could generate different tenors of erotic tension in his compositions.
The present work was acquired directly from the artist by Dr. Alfred Spitzer, a Viennese lawyer who acted as Schiele’s attorney and later the executor of his estate. Spitzer had begun collecting art in his thirties, and often represented artists as part of his practice, frequently taking payment for his services in works of art by his clients. This had a lasting influence on the focus of his collection, which increasingly shifted towards contemporary art through these connections with living artists—according to his daughters, at its height the collection comprised around 800 works of art, which Spitzer displayed in his law firm and at the family home. When Spitzer died in April 1923, at the age of 62, the Internationale Sammler-Zeitung dedicated an extensive obituary to the ‘collector and art lover.’ His collection passed to his wife and, after her death in 1930, to his two daughters Hanna and Edith. After the Anschluss in March 1938, the two sisters fled Vienna, both eventually settling in America. They were both able to take a part of their father's art collection with them, though a number of artworks were allegedly lost as the result of a direct bombing of the depot where they were stored in Vienna. Hockender weiblicher Torso remained with Hanna until 1966; she later bequeathed a number of works from the collection of the lawyer Alfred Spitzer to the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.