(Tulln 1890–1918 Vienna)
Seated nude, signed and dated Egon Schiele 1917, black chalk on paper, 29.5 x 46 cm, framed, (K)

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, The Complete Works, London 1998, page 586/2039 (with larger ill.)

Exhibition:
Egon Schiele: Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings, text: Wolfgang Fischer/Rudolf Leopold, Marlborough Fine Art, London 1964, no. 125

Provenance:
Estate from the artist, Melanie Schiele Schuster (Schiele´s sister)
Finarte Milano, Disegni e Grafica Contemporanea, 21 May 1992, lot 226
Private Ownership, Italy

Egon Schiele does away with the illusion that the sexual pleasure depicted exists somehow independently of the artist by making evident the forced nature of the model-viewer relationship. Whereas Klimt’s models so rarely seek out the viewer’s gaze, Schiele’s women seldom close their eyes to us. In the strictest sense, the observer of Schiele’s nudes is not actually a voyeur, since the scenes depicting models posing lack secrecy from the outset. Of course, both artists, Klimt and Schiele, had the models’ bodies at their disposal. The artist is omnipresent. However, he does disappear, in the case of Gustav Klimt’s drawings, behind the pictorial conception and the fantasy of being able to secretly view an erotic nude. Conversely, in Egon Schiele’s work, he is always present.
Klaus Albrecht Schröder, Egon Schiele, Albertina, Vienna 2005