SCHIELE IN FOCUS: LEOPOLD MUSEUM PRESENTS RECENTLY REDISCOVERED SCHIELE PAINTING TO THE PUBLIC FOR THE FIRST TIME

21.07.2022

115 years after its creation, the portrait of Egon Schiele’s uncle Leopold Czihaczek will be presented alongside select works from the artist’s early oeuvre.

The oil painting Leopold Czihaczek at the Piano by Egon Schiele (1890–1918), which was recently rediscovered in an Austrian private collection, was created by the young artist in May 1907, around one month before his 17th birthday. 115 years after its creation, the painting will be displayed publicly for the first time from 20th July as part of the permanent presentation Vienna 1900. Birth of Modernism. As a new permanent loan, the Czihaczek portrait will occupy a prominent place within the ongoing display of the museum’s collection.

The Early Egon Schiele: An Extraordinary Talent

Schiele’s extraordinary talent as a draftsman became apparent early on. As Schiele’s hometown of Tulln had no secondary school at the time, the young pupil went to school in Krems. When the family moved to Klosterneuburg in 1902, Schiele attended the local high school, which at the time was located in a makeshift building at the foot of Klosterneuburg Abbey. Schiele initially lived with his former home tutor, then with the abbey’s “Curschmied”, a blacksmith skilled in the veterinary care of horses. The new school building did not open until 1905. Schiele’s new drawing teacher, the artist Ludwig Karl Strauch (1875–1959), recognized the young man’s talent and supported his wish to study in Vienna. Egon Schiele would remain close to his teacher, as well as to his other mentors, the painters Max Kahrer (1878–1937), Franz Horst (1862–1950) and Adolf Böhm (1861–1927), a co-founder of the Secession and member of the Klimt Group. The art critic and Schiele patron Arthur Roessler recalled Schiele’s appreciation for his promoters, quoting the artist as follows: “My first auxiliaries – unfortunately there were neither fourteen nor were they saints but they were good people – were the Klosterneuburg painters Kahrer, Horst, Strauch and Professor Böhm.” In 1908, Kahrer, Horst and Strauch participated together with Schiele in the I. Kunstausstellung Klosterneuburg held at the marble hall (emperor’s hall) of the abbey, whose provost at the time was prelate Friedrich Piffl (1864–1932), the later prince-archbishop of Vienna. The exhibition’s organizer was Egon Schiele’s religion teacher, the art historian and Augustinian canon Wolfgang Pauker (1867–1950), who in 1912 was appointed treasurer and custodian of the abbey’s art collections. Two years after another exhibition of the Klosterneuburg artists, the II. Kunst-Ausstellung heimischer Künstler Klosterneuburgs held in 1911, the association of Klosterneuburg artists “Verein heimischer Künstler in Klosterneuburg” was founded in September 1913. At this point in time, Schiele, who had founded the Neukunstgruppe in 1909, had long gone “through Klimt” and become “quite different” – an eminent artist of Expressionism.

Egon Schiele’s Uncle Leopold Czihaczek: Guardian and Supporter

Egon’s father Adolf Schiele (1851–1905) – station master of the Imperial Royal State Railways in Tulln – passed away on the 1st of January 1905 after a protracted illness. During this hard time for the family – consisting of the mother Marie, Egon as well as his two sisters Gertrud and Melanie – which was also fraught with financial difficulties, Egon’s uncle Leopold Czihaczek (1842–1929) assumed joint guardianship of his underage nephew. Czihaczek was a ministerial councilor and chief inspector of the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway who was married to one of Schiele’s father’s sisters. Egon’s wish to become an artist did not meet the family’s expectations, but when the 16-year-old passed his entrance examination at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in 1906, Czihaczek proudly wrote to his wife: “Egon passed splendidly.”

“Throughout the following two years, Egon Schiele was constantly preoccupied with the likeness of his uncle and financial supporter,” notes the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger, before continuing: “No other person was portrayed as often in his oeuvre. A central portrait among these depictions is this painting Leopold Czihaczek at the Piano, which was long lost and recently rediscovered. It is now presented to the public for the first time since its creation and will enrich the Leopold Museum’s Collection with a further chief work from Schiele’s early oeuvre as a permanent loan from an Austrian private collection.”

The Painting Leopold Czihaczek at the Piano

The oil painting shows Egon Schiele’s uncle Leopold Czihaczek playing the piano in the music room of his apartment on Zirkusgasse in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt district. In this painting, Schiele processed elements of modern artistic developments and gave a brilliant display of his technical mastery: “In terms of style, Schiele’s brushwork reveals late-Impressionist tendencies, combined with the muted palette of pastel colors characteristic of his early oeuvre. In terms of composition, the artist differentiated between illuminated and shadowed sections which allowed him to negotiate the uncommonly large horizontal format despite the chosen perspective. As if by way of appeasement, he countered this with a unified dynamics of brushstrokes,” the head of the Leopold Museum Research Center, Verena Gamper, analyzes. “The close-up view of the piano player and the focus on the sheets of music convey an effect of complete immersion in the music. This is emphasized by the hands which the artist rendered in a deliberately blurry manner, as if detached from the rest of the body,” according to Gamper.

Precisely Dated and Freshly Restored

The painting is held by its original frame, and the canvas, too, is fixed to the stretcher with the original nails. Following a thorough cleaning of its surface, the long lost painting is now presented to the public for the first time in new splendor. Until now, the work was known only from a 1930 black-and-white photograph which showed it in the parlor of Gustav Huber – a ministerial councilor and former owner of the painting, who, at a young age, had also benefitted from Leopold Czihaczek’s guardianship and financial support. Additionally, two extant preliminary studies were known. The drawing dated “Schiele 17.IV.07” is now also presented to the public for the first time as part of this focus exhibition. A designation on the painting’s original stretcher reads “begonnen 21.IV.07” [begun 21st April 1907]. This allows us to precisely trace the period of the painting’s creation from the first study via the artist’s work on the canvas all the way to its completion – according to the date added by the artist next to his signature – on 12th May 1907.

The Presentation of the Czihaczek Portrait

The work at the center of the presentation, whose format of 60.2 x 100.7 cm is unusually large for the artist’s early oeuvre, was created by Schiele during his first year at the Academy. It is framed by small-scale landscapes and cityscapes which were also created during this time and are testament to the artist’s visible mastery of technique and genre when he was still a student. The presentation features some 14 paintings and drawings from the artist’s early oeuvre, created between 1906 and 1908, which include works from the Leopold Museum’s Collection, the Leopold Private Collection and further private lenders – among them Werner Gradisch, the great-nephew of Egon Schiele’s sister Melanie Schuster. The display comprises vedute, including Bare Trees, Houses and Shrine (Klosterneuburg) and Purkersdorf, genre scenes, including Before the Feast of St. Leopold in Klosterneuburg and Three Boys, as well as landscape depictions, such as Woods in Autumn.

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