Sale: 539 / Modern Art Day Sale, June 10. 2023 in Munich Lot 308


308
Egon Schiele
Malende Frau, 1907.
Oil on thin cardboard
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 44,000
Sold:
€ 292,100 / $ 321,310

(incl. surcharge)
Malende Frau. 1907.
Oil on thin cardboard.
Kallir P 49. Signed in lower right. 27.6 x 25.7 cm (10.8 x 10.1 in).
[EH].

• From the collection of Dr. Alfred Spitzer, a close friend of Egon Schiele and his legal advisor.
• Consistent provenance.
• Egon Schiele counts among the most important visual artists of Viennese Modernism.
• Over that past 39 years, only 5 figurative paintings from this early year of origin have been offered on the international auction market. (artprice.com)
.

PROVENANCE: Estate of Dr. Alfred Spitzer (1861-1923), Vienna (1930 at the latest).
Edith Spitzer Neumann (the above's daughter), Vienna and New York.
Private collection New York (acquired from the above in 1966).
Galerie St. Etienne, New York (from the above, with a label).
Serge Sabarsky Collection (1912-1996), New York.
Serge Sabarsky Estate, New York.
Vally Sabarsky Collection (1909-2002), New York.
Vally Sabarsky Foundation, New York.

EXHIBITION: Egon Schiele. A Centennial Retrospective, Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY, January 28 - April 15, 1990 (with a label).
Egon Schiele. Gemälde, Zeichnungen und Aquarelle, Schloss Mainau, September 22 - November 13, 1994, cat. no. 3.
Egon Schiele, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, Martigny, May 3 - 14, 1995, cat. no. 7.
Egon Schiele. The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections, Neue Galerie, New York, October 11, 2005 - February 20, 2006, cat. no. P3 (with color illu.).
From Klimt to Klee. Masterworks from the Serge Sabarsky Collection, Neue Galerie, New York, October 15, 2009 - February 15, 2010, cat. no. 32.
Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, Neue Galerie, New York, June 28, 2018 - September 3, 2018.

LITERATURE: Otto Kallir, Egon Schiele, Persönlichkeit und Werk, Vienan 1930, p. 50, no. 24 (illu. on plate ).
Rudolf Leopold, Egon Schiele. Gemälde Aquarelle Zeichnungen, Salzburg 1972, p. 527, no. 49.
Gianfranco Malafarina, L'Opera di Egon Schiele, Milan 1982, no. 44.
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, New York 1990, p. 273, no. 49 (with illu.).
Kai Artinger, Egon Schiele. Leben und Werk, Cologne 1999, p. 20.

The lawyer Dr. Alfred Spitzer (1861–1923) supported Egon Schiele as a patron and collector during his time at the academy and later oversaw the artist's estate. This painting also used to be in possession of the early friend, after his death it would remain with Spitzer's two daughters. Edith, who was able to flee to the USA via several stations in 1938, sold this work to Otto Kallir in 1966, who ran St. Etienne Gallery in New York at that time.

Owing to the broad brushstroke and the two-dimensional account of the setting, this early picture from 1907 already hints at an overcoming of the academy style and its love for detail. Egon Schiele takes the spatial depth out of the depiction, a high vanishing point without a horizon conveys a closed impression, the colors are also reduced to just a few tones. The further development of his pictorial compositions can already be observed here. It is also important to note that he puts figure and landscape on a par, as we often find either people or the landscape at the center of the depiction. Another aspect worthwhile to mention is that the person portrayed is defined as a woman and a painter, however, she can not be identified as an individual as it is the case with the subjects of his portraits. According to the catalogue raisonné, it is the only painting in his oeuvre that shows a person painting, and it is a woman on top of that! When he started at the academy that same year, he found an entirely different reality: Until 1920, only male students were admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.



308
Egon Schiele
Malende Frau, 1907.
Oil on thin cardboard
Estimate:
€ 40,000 / $ 44,000
Sold:
€ 292,100 / $ 321,310

(incl. surcharge)