Standing Woman in a Patterned Blouse
Framed: 24 1/2 × 20 1/2 × 1 inches (62.23 × 52.07 × 2.54 cm)
Dürer to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK, June 23-August 18, 1996; Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, Jacksonville, FL, September 20-November 24, 1996; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Decmber 21, 1996-March 2, 1997.
Between 1910 and 1914, Egon Schiele lived with Valerie "Wally" Neuzil. She was the model for many of his drawings, probably including this one. Curving lines define her body, and repeated patches of red-orange energize the composition. Notice her hair, poppy-patterned blouse, and stockings.
Schiele studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and later exhibited with the Vienna Secessionists. The Secessionists were a group of artists who rejected the academic tradition in their search for a modern style.
Dr. Heinrich Schwarz (1894-1974), Vienna [1];
Richard S. Davis (1917-1985), Minneapolis, by December 1952 [2];
His gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1953.
NOTES:
[1] Heinrich Schwarz was an Austrian art historian best known for his work on prints and the integration of photography into art historical research. Schwarz was identified as a “non-Aryan” by the Nazi regime and removed from his position at the Belvedere Galerie in April 1938. He emigrated to Denmark in 1939, then Sweden, and finally to the United States in February 1940. From 1943-1954 he was a curator at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum of Art. Schwarz acquired much of his private collection of paintings, drawings, prints and photographs from his father Louis Schwarz (d. 1930) during Louis’s lifetime. Heinrich Schwarz’s collector’s stamp (Lugt 1372) is on the verso of this drawing.
[2] Richard S. Davis was Chief Curator at the Minneapolis Institute of Art from 1946-1956 and served as the MIA’s director from 1956-1959. He was a strong advocate for modern art and displayed his own collection in his modernist home on Lake Minnetonka, which he commissioned from architect Philip Johnson. With thanks to Richard S. Davis, Jr. and the Davis family for sharing their memories of their father and his collection with the Nelson-Atkins.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 189, (repro.).
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele, the Complete Works, no. 1117 (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1990), 461, 476, (repro.).
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 216, (repro.).
