“Portrait of Wally” by Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele was an Austrian painter born on June 12, 1890. As an artist he was active primarily during the early 20th century and, therefore, he was an expressionist. His works have a very distinguished, specific style. His art is provocative, somewhat dark and gloomy, with a prevailing amount of nudes. One of his most famous art pieces is “Portrait of Wally,” which is an artwork he created in 1912 portraying his model and former lover Walburga “Wally” Neuzil (Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2004). This artwork is famous not only for its artistic density, deep feeling and unique softness of colors created by Schiele, but also because it was the centerpiece of a complex and highly publicized legal case that went on for more than 13 years (Shapiro, 2013).

Expressionism is a part of modern art movement and just as impressionism its goal is not creating a photographically perfect and very realistic image of life. Expressionism values emotions and feelings. Art of this period is characterized by gestural brushstrokes which convey extreme emotions. Artists use arbitrary colors in their works, thus objects have unnatural colors. People could have blue face, grass could be red, sky — yellow and etc. Typically, expressionist art is not very positive, because its essential goal is to portray extreme emotion, which due to the anxiety about, at that time, modern world was predominantly negative (MoMA Learning).

Egon Schiele was inspired by various artists of the modern art period. Gustav Klimt was interested in mentoring various young artists and one of them happened to be Egon Schiele. Schiele was very inspired by him and many his art pieces in the beginning were very similar to those of Gustav Klimt, nevertheless with time, Egon Schiele developed his own unique painting style. A few years after creating his first big works and exhibiting them on art shows, Egon Schiele met seventeen-year-old Wally who previously was Gustav Klimt’s mistress and they immediately fell in love. They would move around the area of Vienna seeking inspiration for his art (Biography of Egon Schiele, 2017).

The painting depicts Wally’s bust. She has light-brown curly hair and pale-blue big eyes. She is wearing a red hat and has a black outfit with a white collar. Her skin is quite pale, with a pink tone. That gives a visible contrast to her lips, which are of a dark-red shade. In the background, in the right corner we can see, presumably, a small tree or a flower which varies its coloration from red to yellow, to green. The background itself is not very detailed: all we can see are white-grey walls.

“Portrait of Wally” has a lot of different tones and colors. There are no supplementary color contrasts and low saturation most likely because Egon Schiele tried to make the painting look very harmonious and calm. Her face is pale and, generally, beige. However, she has some blue strokes next to her nose, eyes, on her forehead and next to her ears. If we look closely we could also see some orange, grey, brown, green and even a little bit of black on her chin. The collar of her dress is also not entirely white — it has some blue spots, some beige and even greenish stains. Her brown hair has a lot of green-black strokes in it and her brows have a very distinct res color in them. Just as the collar, background is not entirely white either. It looks a little grey, because it has a lot dirty-white strokes which have a little blue in them, a little green, yellow, red and etc. The plant is probably the most color-varied part of the painting: it has yellow, brown, green, red, black, blue colors. Just like all other works of Egon Schiele, this particular art piece is made by cool colors with relatively low saturation.

Egon Schiele was a major expressionist and his work represents this art movement very well. Despite the “dirtiness” and dullness of the color pattern in the painting, it has a very calm and appealing tone into it. Walburga “Wally” Neuzil was a very significant person to Egon Schiele and was romantically involved with him, therefore he portrayed her in a good perspective, showing compassion and love to her. He used dull, but soft and pretty colors to show his warm feelings towards her. Especially he payed a lot of attention to her eyes. He painted them with a very appealing, dreamy blue color and some white spots on iris to show their brightness, which is probably because he loved her eyes a lot. All of Egon Schiele works have a very unique and specific texture. He used hard brushes and painted with large strokes, which are very obvious to the viewer. This “negligence” is a very distinct characteristic of expressionism which was partially created and established by Egon Schiele. The lines in his art are also a very significant characteristic of his work. Just as the color, they are unnatural and contradict the sizes and shapes of objects in reality. Wally in his painting has a big head, big eyes, a small chin and a quite big mouth, which is unrealistically close to the bottom of her face. The lines in his art are curved, sometimes sharp and very “quick”. This makes the expression of feelings in his art even more “extreme”.

During World War II tremendous amount of various artworks was seized by the Nazis from people all over Europe. Both public and private collections of German art were stolen by the Nazis, because Hitler had a desire to establish Berlin an ultimate dominant cultural center of the Europe and display all the artwork. Nazis identified art as German as long as it had any kind of connection to Germany, even the slightest (Shapiro & Shira T., 2013). Egon Schiele’s painting “Portrait of Wally” happened to be one of them. However, unlike many other works of art, this particular painting has a very long, complex and highly publicized legal case that went on for more than 13 years (Shapiro, 2013).

This painting belonged to Lea Bondi Jaray, Jewish art dealer whose art collection was seized by the Nazis during World War Two. After the war U.S. Army rescued the artworks from Nazis and “Portrait of Wally” was mixed with other Egon Schiele’ works and kept at an Austrian museum. Later on it was said, by mistake, that it never belonged to Lea Bondi Jaray and was brought to United States. It caused a lot of misunderstanding and arguing whether the paining belonged to the Austrian museum or not and finally, after 13 year long circulation, the painting was brought back to Vienna and kept at The Leopold Museum.

Citations:

“Biography of Egon Schiele.” Egon Schiele – The Complete Works, www.egon-schiele.net/biography.html.

“Home.” Portrait of Wally, www.portraitofwally.com/.

Egon Schiele – Self-Portrait | Focus on a Painting | Exhibitions | Leopold Museum, www.leopoldmuseum.org/en/leopoldcollection/masterpieces/33.

Shapiro, Herbert E. “Portrait of Wally: The Face That Launched a Thousand Lawsuits.” Library Journal, 15 Nov. 2013, p. 56. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A351787874/LitRC?u=cuny_ccny&sid=LitRC&xid=04841e83. Accessed 14 Nov. 2018.

Shapiro, Shira T. ..student author. EBSCOhost, ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lgs&AN=502600125&site=ehost-live. Accessed 14 Nov. 2018.

Kimmel, Daniel. “’Portrait of Wally’ Presents an Ugly Picture of Art World.” “Gale” Literature Resource Center, The Jewish Advocate, 29 June 2012, search-proquest-com.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/docview/1266498606/abstract/671E8CF2B60C4F15PQ/1?accountid=9967.