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Lot Essay
Jane Kallir has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Executed in 1911, Bub mit grünen Strümpfen dates from a period when Schiele began to draw young children with recurring frequency. He found his models among the vagrant children of Vienna's slums, choosing them not merely because they could be convinced to pose for a pittance, but because their relaxed, unselfconscious and uninhibited behavior allowed him to observe true human nature stripped of all the pretense and convention of Imperial Viennese society. It was around this time that the young artist would also achieve a major stylistic breakthrough in his art, arriving at a unique combination of naturalistic rendering and expressive stylization that derived from his earlier experiments with Jugendstil formalism.
In contrast to his earlier and more provocative drawings of adolescents, Bub mit grünen Strümpfen is a more straightforward account of an upper middle-class boy. Compared with his edgy, angular, and more expressive line of 1910, here Schiele adopts a softer, more rounded, economic and realistic line with which to define his subject.
Executed in 1911, Bub mit grünen Strümpfen dates from a period when Schiele began to draw young children with recurring frequency. He found his models among the vagrant children of Vienna's slums, choosing them not merely because they could be convinced to pose for a pittance, but because their relaxed, unselfconscious and uninhibited behavior allowed him to observe true human nature stripped of all the pretense and convention of Imperial Viennese society. It was around this time that the young artist would also achieve a major stylistic breakthrough in his art, arriving at a unique combination of naturalistic rendering and expressive stylization that derived from his earlier experiments with Jugendstil formalism.
In contrast to his earlier and more provocative drawings of adolescents, Bub mit grünen Strümpfen is a more straightforward account of an upper middle-class boy. Compared with his edgy, angular, and more expressive line of 1910, here Schiele adopts a softer, more rounded, economic and realistic line with which to define his subject.