Egon Schiele
Seated Boy, Bird’s‑Eye View (Sitzender Knabe, Draufsicht), 1918
Black crayon on paper
Signed with monogram lower right
30 × 46.5 cm (11.8 × 18.3 in)
Auctioned for € 127,000 at Ketterer Kunst in 2025
(Kallir d2147)

Made in 1918, the final year of Egon Schiele’s life, Sitzender Knabe, Draufsicht is a remarkably assured drawing that shows the artist working with complete confidence and clarity. The unusual bird’s‑eye perspective gives the sheet an immediate, almost sculptural presence: the boy’s form compressed into the frame, his posture captured with a directness that feels both intimate and quietly monumental. Schiele’s chalk line—sharp, searching, and unmistakably his—renders the figure with a precision that leaves nothing extraneous. Schiele opens up a new perspective on portraiture with this unconventional bird’s‑eye view.

The year 1918 brought Schiele unprecedented visibility. His exhibition at the Vienna Secession in March was sold out, confirming his position as one of the leading voices of Austrian modernism. Yet even in this moment of public success, his drawings from these months reveal a deepening introspection. He was refining his vision, paring it down to essentials: contour, gesture, and the psychological charge of the human figure. This work belongs to that distilled late phase, where every line feels necessary and alive.

The drawing carries a distinguished provenance. Once part of the celebrated Serge Sabarsky Collection in New York—a collection instrumental in shaping the postwar understanding of Schiele’s importance—it remained in private hands for more than forty years. Its appearance now marks its first entry onto the international auction market. Comparable drawings from this late period are held in major museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as well as the Albertina in Vienna.