Schiele’s Self-Portrait

fake: T. Wheeler

2018, Watercolor on Paper, The Rixford Collection

original: Egon Schiele

1910, Pencil and Colors on Paper, 17.4" x 12" | Leopold Museum, Vienna Austria

In Brief

Egon Schiele Museum. Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter and poet, born in Lower Austria in 1890. He studied at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Art but soon rejected classic styles. Schiele was introverted and wanted to express inner lives rather than idealising beings and object.

gon Schiele Museum. In his early years Schiele was inspired by Gustav Klimt. They shared a love for lines, flat images, and portraying women.

In contrast to Klimt, Schiele’s later works were much more psychological and provocative. He often overstepped the mark of social acceptance at the time. His use of very young models was shocking, as were his ‘pornographic’ paintings. At 22 years of age, Schiele was charged with seduction and abduction of a young girl. Though the charges were subsequently dropped the temporary imprisonment left a deep mark on the artist.

Egon Schiele died from the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 at the age of 28, having served in a prisoner-of-war camp during World War I. His wife Edith had died just three days earlier.

Detail