(Tulln 1890–1918 Vienna)
Head of a woman, signed, dated Egon Schiele 1918, black crayon on paper, sheet size 46.3 x 29.5 cm, framed

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York 1990, p. 607, No. D. 2209, with ill.
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York 1998, p. 607, No. D. 2009, with ill.

Provenance:
Private Collection, Salzburg, since the early 1930s

TEXT BY JANE KALLIR
© Jane Kallir

Egon Schiele reached the peak of his professional success in 1918. A virtually sold-out exhibition at the Vienna Secession in March affirmed his position as Austria’s leading artist. (Oskar Kokoschka was then living in Germany, and Gustav Klimt had, sadly, died in February.) Schiele’s new stature brought in a host of portrait commissions, and for the first time, a significant number of his clients were women. Although the artist would not live to execute any of these women’s commissions in oil, his drawings from 1917-18 evidence the artist’s newfound sensitivity to female portrait subjects.

It may be assumed that Frauenkopf was a commissioned portrait. However, since this is the only known depiction of the sitter, it is unlikely that an oil was planned. As was his custom, Schiele here focused on the face and the hands.
He was not alone among artists in considering these the most evocative human features. The subject of Frauenkopf has not been identified.

By 1918, Schiele’s skill as a draughtsman was so highly refined that he could capture his subject in a single, virtually unbroken sweep of the crayon. Always a speedy worker, he had found the perfect line. He had no need, as formerly, to redraw or embellish faulty contours, though he did on occasion make mistakes in draftsmanship. These mistakes should not be ascribed to sloppiness, but rather to pace. The artist’s extraordinary velocity, like that of a master racecar driver, occasionally caused him to veer off course. Usually, however, he was in complete control, and in drawings such as Frauenkopf Schiele achieved an unprecedented degree of accuracy. Few artists in history have managed to express the spirit of their subjects with such economy of means.