Egon Schiele
Erich Lederer, Drawing on the Floor (Erich Lederer am Boden zeichnend), 1912
watercolour and pencil on paper
31.7 × 48.2 cm
Auctioned at Christie’s in 2013 for GBP 481,250
(Kallir d1002)

This portrait of the young Erich Lederer belongs to one of the most personal moments in Schiele’s career. In the winter of 1912 he was invited to the Lederer family home in Győr to paint Erich’s portrait, and it was during those weeks that artist and sitter formed a close and lasting friendship. Erich was fifteen, bright and curious, and already deeply drawn to art. Schiele described him with a mixture of affection and sharp insight in a letter to Arthur Roessler, noting the boy’s “long, aristocratic face” and natural gift for drawing, though lamenting that he had “never observed nature” — a remark preserved by Alessandra Comini in Egon Schiele’s Portraits (Berkeley, 1974, p. 114).

This sheet is one of several studies made in preparation for the oil portrait now in the Kunstmuseum Basel. Schiele often observed Erich as he sketched on the floor, completely absorbed in his own work, and he responded to these moments with unusual gentleness. Here, the boy crouches over his paper, lost in concentration. The pose is unforced, the kind of moment that can only be captured when a child feels entirely at ease. Schiele’s touch is light and attentive: the washes of watercolour are soft, the pencil line relaxed, and the composition left open enough for Erich’s focus to become the true subject.

Erich’s interest in drawing was genuine — his mother Serena had studied with Klimt — and soon after meeting Schiele he began taking lessons from him. Schiele encouraged the boy’s talent and imagined he might one day become a painter. Erich later recalled, with some humour, that his teenage fascination with Schiele’s models played its own role in his eagerness to visit the studio, but the friendship that grew between them was sincere and enduring. It is telling that this sheet remained in Erich Lederer’s own collection for many years: a personal keepsake from the winter in Győr, and a reminder of the moment their connection began.

The drawing itself is striking in its simplicity. Schiele conveys the entire scene with a few economical lines: a single stroke suggesting the wall behind Erich’s foot, another marking the edge of the paper on which he draws. Everything else rests on the boy’s posture — intent, relaxed, and entirely absorbed. It is a quiet moment, observed with warmth, and one of the clearest records of the trust that existed between artist and sitter.