Egon Schiele:
Crouching Nude, Back View (Kauernder Rückenakt), 1917
Gouache and black crayon on paper
29.5 × 45 cm
Auctioned at Dorotheum, Vienna on 18 November 2025 for € 3,230,000
(Kallir d1949)

This drawing from Schiele’s late period exemplifies the taut, economical line that defines his final year. Schiele worked with a rare combination of precision and tenderness. The figure, folded into a crouching pose and seen from behind, is shaped by a single, confident contour that seems to hold both tension and breath. The long spine, the narrow waist, the sharply bent limbs — all are rendered with a clarity that heightens the vulnerability of the turned body. Drawings from 1917 often carry this mixture of restraint and emotional charge, yet few feel as immediate or as quietly intimate as this sheet.

The handwritten inscription Szerena Lederer on the reverse anchors the work in one of Vienna’s most significant collecting families. Together with her husband August, Serena Lederer built a collection that included the largest private holdings of Gustav Klimt. Klimt introduced Schiele to the family in 1912, and a close connection developed with their son Erich; the Lederers are known to have owned a substantial group of Schiele drawings. After 1938, Erich fled to Switzerland, while Serena remained in Vienna before emigrating to Budapest, where she died in 1943. Despite extensive research, the work’s path after her ownership cannot be fully reconstructed, though cooperation between the Lederer heirs and the consignor has allowed for a mutually accepted resolution.

In early 1917 Schiele obtained a military posting in Vienna that granted him an unusual degree of freedom. It allowed him to return to a shared domestic life with Edith and to resume steady work in his Hietzing studio. This stability marked the beginning of a final, remarkably productive period. With time, space, and a growing public presence, Schiele consolidated his position within the Wiener Moderne and achieved a new level of artistic and economic confidence.