Egon Schiele:
Girl Reclining on Stomach (Auf dem Bauch liegendes Mädchen), 1910
watercolour and black crayon on paper
31.2 × 45.3 cm
auctioned at Sotheby’s for GBP 1,575,000
(Kallir d479)

Sotheby’s places this drawing within the decisive year of 1910, when Schiele’s work began to shed the last traces of academic training and Klimt’s influence. Having left the Vienna Academy in 1909, he was finding his own voice with remarkable speed. His early exhibitions with the Neukunstgruppe — a self‑formed circle of young Viennese artists determined to break from academic convention — had already highlighted his promise, but in 1910 his drawings became unmistakably his own. The line sharpened, the subjects grew bolder, and his sense of psychological presence deepened. Jane Kallir describes this moment as one of rare artistic precocity, noting how Schiele gave form to the intensities of youth that older artists often smooth away.

The model is his younger sister, Gertrude “Gerti” Schiele, then sixteen. In these early years, when access to professional models was limited, Gerti became his most frequent collaborator. She posed for him in various states of dress and undress, and the resulting drawings are among his most sensitive studies of the female figure — sometimes direct, sometimes softened by the small, stylish details of her clothing. Kallir has written about the closeness of their working routine, describing how naturally Gerti fit into the rhythm of his early studio life.

In this sheet, Gerti is shown resting her head on her left arm, her fingers curled and delicately coloured in green and yellow. The pose feels inward, almost private, as though she’s folded into her own thoughts. Her placement high on the page creates a gentle distance, surrounded by blank space that heightens the sense of stillness. Schiele’s line is sparse but expressive, anchoring the head and hand with detail while allowing the rest of the body to remain only lightly sketched. His selective use of watercolour, concentrated on the figure and withheld from the surroundings, was becoming a hallmark of his 1910 work, allowing the form to feel both anchored and suspended.

This balance between intimacy and restraint, between closeness and observation, is characteristic of the Gerti drawings from this period. Girl Reclining on Stomach sits comfortably among the reclining and resting poses he explored throughout 1910, each one marking the emergence of a figural language that would soon define his mature style.