Egon Schiele:
Female nude (Weiblicher Akt), 1917
black chalk on paper
45.8 × 29.8 cm
Auctioned at im Kinsky in 2017 for € 320.000
(Kallir d1949a)

The drawing belongs to Schiele’s final year, when his line had become both economical and assured. Executed in what im Kinsky identifies as black chalk, the sheet displays the long, continuous contours characteristic of his late dry‑media work. The figure is shown from behind in a seated pose, the torso twisting slightly as both arms rise toward the hair. This upward gesture opens the body and creates a dynamic diagonal through the back and shoulders. Schiele relies almost entirely on line: confident strokes define the spine, hips, and lifted arms, while only the lightest internal marks suggest volume. The modelling is minimal, allowing the clarity of the contour to carry the full expressive weight of the figure.

The back becomes the central expressive surface. Its curve is shaped with a single, unbroken sweep, giving the figure a sense of extension rather than introspection. The lifted arms introduce a moment of physical tension, but the drawing remains calm in its execution—anatomical, direct, and free of the psychological strain that marked his earlier nudes. The warm tone of the paper softens the starkness of the medium, letting the figure emerge with a quiet radiance. A small monogram appears at the lower left, placed with characteristic restraint.

The sheet gains further significance through its provenance. Otto Stoessl (1875–1936), who acquired the drawing directly from Schiele in 1917 or 1918, was a Viennese writer and critic active in the same modernist circles that supported the emerging avant‑garde. Connected to the literary and artistic milieu around Die Fackel and the Hagenbund, he belonged to the generation that recognised and collected contemporary work directly from artists. His ownership situates the drawing firmly within the cultural networks of its time. After his death, the work passed to his son Franz Stoessl, then to Franz’s widow Rudolfine Stoessl, who gifted it during her lifetime to a member of the family of the current owner. Since then it has remained in private Austrian hands, forming a continuous and well‑documented line of descent.

The drawing’s importance is underscored by its scholarly confirmation. Jane Kallir examined the work in the original, authenticated it, and assigned it the number D. 1949a for inclusion in her supplement to the catalogue raisonné. This places the sheet securely within Schiele’s final creative phase, when his attention to the human figure had shifted toward clarity, gesture, and an economy of means. As a newly surfaced and previously little‑known work, it offers a rare view into the subtlety of Schiele’s late drawing practice—an art grounded in observation, stripped of excess, and animated by the expressive power of line alone.