Egon Schiele:
Two Little Girls (1911) – Zwei Kleine Mädchen
Gouache, watercolor, and pencil.
40 x 30 cm
©Albertina, Vienna
(Kallir d761)

According to Jane Kallir, this work is also referred to as “Lies und Lene”. It is said to be complemented by a thus far unidentified piece called “Max und Moritz,” a title derived from a popular poem by Wilhelm Busch. Such titles are unusual for Schiele. Children were often taken as models for his drawings. The streets of Vienna were teeming with young children. His friend, the artist and writer Paris von Gütersloh, gave the following description:

“There were always two or three smaller or larger girls in [Schiele’s] studio; girls from the neighborhood, from the street, solicited in nearby Schonbrunn Park; some ugly, some attractive, some washed, but also some unwashed. They sat around doing nothing…Well, they slept, recovered from parental beatings, lolled about lazily…their closely cropped or tangled hair, pulled their skirts up or down, tied or untied their shoelaces. And all this they did – if one can call that doing something – because they were left to themselves like animals in comfortable cage, or so they perceived it.”