Portrait of a Woman (1910, Met-Objekt 5017)
Original title: Portrait of a Woman
kurzbeschreibung
Egon Schiele made Porträt einer Frau in 1910 as a colour lithograph on paper, 14 by 8.9 cm. It shows a woman in a wide-brimmed hat, her features sharply stylised, one hand raised to her mouth. The sheet belongs among the documents of Schiele's expressive phase within early modernism.
Description
A large, broad-brimmed hat in a dark tone frames the sitter's head. Her facial features are pushed into stylisation: strikingly large eyes, a pronounced nose, and between them red lips that stand out clearly. She wears a plain long-sleeved top with a collar; her hand rests at her mouth in a gesture that reads as pensive. Greys dominate the palette, with dark accents reserved for the hat and the lips alone. The layout pulls the face to the centre and makes it the resting point of the view.
Context
This sheet came about in 1910, in a period of varied artistic experimentation in Vienna at that time. Schiele was close to Gustav Klimt then, yet was gradually moving away from Jugendstil and finding his own expressive hand. During this phase he was occupied with questions of identity and human feeling. The small format suggests the lithograph was intended as an invitation card or ex libris, as was common among artists of the day.
Impact
The restrained colouring, together with the exaggerated features, gives the print a penetrating, almost unsettling intensity. Because the hand lies at the mouth, the portrait takes on an inward-looking quality that speaks directly to the viewer. It is precisely the stylisation that brings out the sitter's psychological depth and makes this motif a characteristic example of expressionist art.
Technique
The sheet was made as a colour lithograph: the artist draws with greasy chalk on the stone, from which the image is then transferred to paper. Several distinct areas of colour can be made out in this impression, suggesting printing in multiple stages. Drawn lines and flat tones of colour interlock, showing Schiele's typical approach in graphic work.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)