Egon Schiele:
Male Nude in Profile Facing Right (Männlicher Akt im Profil nach rechts), 1910
Watercolor, gouache, black crayon and charcoal on paper
18 × 12 ⅜ in. (45.7 × 31.3 cm)
Auctionedat Sotheby’s, London, 2016, for USD 112,500
(Kallir d644)

Made in 1910, Male Nude in Profile Facing Right belongs to the moment when Egon Schiele was still formally tied to the Vienna Academy yet already moving beyond its constraints. The sheet presents a male nude in right profile, built up with watercolor, gouache, black crayon, and charcoal—materials he used with growing assurance as he searched for a more personal, expressive language.

The drawing carries the discipline of academic life study, but the handling is unmistakably Schiele’s: the contour is tense and deliberate, the musculature sharply articulated, and the mixed‑media technique allows him to shift between precision and immediacy. Even in a conventional pose, the figure feels charged, as if Schiele were already testing how far he could push the body toward psychological expression.

Sotheby’s has noted that works from this year capture Schiele at a turning point—still grounded in anatomical accuracy, yet increasingly driven by an inner urgency. That inward focus is essential to understanding the sheet. Living in Vienna at a time when psychoanalysis was reshaping ideas of selfhood, Schiele was intensely preoccupied with his own mind and body. Jane Kallir has remarked that in 1910 much of Schiele’s emotional and sexual energy was directed inward, an insight that helps illuminate the uncanny resemblance between this model and the artist himself.

The similarities are striking: the furrowed brow, the narrowed right eye, the wiry, upright hair, the lean, bony structure. These traits echo his self‑portraits from 1909–1912 and blur the line between model and artist. Rather than a straightforward academic study, the figure can be understood as a kind of surrogate—an externalized version of Schiele through which he could examine himself with a degree of distance.

Seen in this light, the drawing becomes more than a classroom exercise. It marks the threshold of Schiele’s artistic breakthrough: rooted in discipline, sharpened by introspection, and already moving toward the radical figural language that would define his mature work. This drawing marks the continued significance of these early works within Schiele’s evolving oeuvre.