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Segelschiffe im wellenbewegtem Wasser
(Der Hafen von Triest), 1907, Egon
Schiele, private collection
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I have a hard time loving the work of Egon Schiele. Erotic
paintings, emaciated figures, and anguished self-portraits leave me cold.
I far prefer the Expressionism of Käthe Kollwitz and
Gabriele Münter.
They weren’t happy, either, but at least they had something real to complain
about.
Then my friend Bruce
McMillan introduced me to Schiele’s boat paintings. They don’t quite make
up for all those tortured people, but they’re beautifully drawn and kinetic. Interestingly,
the highest auction prices for Schiele’s work are not for his erotica, but for
his landscapes, including the record-setting Häuser
mit bunter Wäsche ‘Vorstadt’ II, which sold for $40.1 million in 2011.
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Boote im Hafen von Triest, 1908, Egon Schiele, courtesy Landesmuseum Niederösterreich
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There’s no question that Schiele was a prodigy. At 16, he
was the youngest student ever to enroll at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.
After three years, he quit without graduating. In school and after, he was mentored
by Gustav Klimt, who
did much to advance his career.
“Klimt was an established star and Schiele a cocksure
student when the two first met in 1908,” wrote
Laura Cumming. “But it is immediately obvious… that their obsessions were
already mutual.”
Klimt had innumerable affairs and fathered 14 children out
of wedlock. But he was staid compared to his protégée, who was completely
amoral in matters of sexuality. Schiele was incestuously attracted to his sister
Gerti, to the great consternation of their father (who went on to die of
syphilis himself). At age 16, Schiele took Gerti, then 12, by train to Trieste
and spent the night with her.
At 21, he met Walburga (Wally) Neuzil, age 17, one
of Klimt’s models. Aspiring to leave ‘repressive’ Vienna behind, the couple
moved to a small Bohemian village. Driven out due to their lifestyle, they moved
to slightly-larger Neulengbach.
There, Schiele was accused of seducing a young girl and making pornographic
images available to children. Although the rape charge was eventually dropped,
he spent a month in jail for the pictures.
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Dampfer und Segelboote im Hafen von Triest, watercolor, pencil and gouache on
Japan paper, 1912, Egon Schiele
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Back in Vienna, he wrote a friend, “I intend to get married,
advantageously. Not to Wally.” Instead, he’d picked out Edith Harms, from a
good middle-class family. As a former prostitute and artist’s model, Wally was a
professional liability. Schiele proposed that he and Wally continue their
relationship, vacationing together every summer without Edith. Wally indignantly
refused.
Four days after the wedding, Egon Schiele was drafted into
the army. He was given a job as a clerk in a POW camp. There, he drew and painted
imprisoned Russian officers, nicking extra rations for himself and Edith on the
side.
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Die Brücke, 1913, Egon
Schiele, private collection
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By 1917, Schiele was back in Vienna. He was invited to
participate in the Vienna
Secession's 49th exhibition in 1918, with a prodigious 50 works in the
show. His success was spectacular. Demand—and prices—for Schiele’s work rose
rapidly.
It was, alas, a short-lived triumph. In autumn of that year,
Spanish flu pandemic
reached Vienna. Edith and their unborn child died on October 28. Schiele lived
just three days more. He was just 28.
It’s tempting to wonder what marriage, parenthood, and maturity
would have done to temper the wild excesses of his youth, or how it would have changed his style. But, had he lived to ripe old age,
Schiele would have also experienced the annexation of Austria by the Nazis
twenty years later. It’s hard to imagine he would have prospered.
