Egon Schiele:
Standing Girl with Hands Raised (Stehendes Mädchen mit erhobenen Händen), 1917
Pencil on paper
44.5 × 28 cm
Auctioned at Sotheby’s, London, 1995 (estimate 150,000–250,000 GBP)
(Kallir d1988)

The girl in this drawing stands in a way that feels both tentative and self‑contained, as if she has been interrupted in a moment that belonged entirely to her. Her hands rise toward her chest with a kind of quiet urgency, not dramatic, not posed, but instinctive, as though she is adjusting something we cannot see or steadying herself before continuing. Schiele follows this small, inward gesture with a line that moves lightly across the paper, attentive but never insistent. The looseness of her clothing, the frayed edges, the slight shift of weight in her legs — all of it comes together without strain, as if the drawing formed itself around her.

Her face carries a directness that is softened by the simplicity of the pencil. The eyes are wide, not startled but alert, and they give her a presence that feels grounded despite the lifted hands. The slight inward turn of her feet adds a touch of vulnerability, a detail that makes the whole figure feel more human and less constructed. Schiele leaves much of the sheet untouched, allowing the open space to hold the gesture without crowding it. The drawing breathes in that space; it feels like a moment that has not been shaped for anyone else.

By 1917 Schiele had reached a point where he trusted the smallest movements. He no longer needed the charged distortions of his earlier years. Instead, he let the body reveal itself through the simplest means. In this sheet, the pencil carries a quiet steadiness, as if he were listening more than directing. The girl’s gesture is not symbolic or theatrical; it is simply hers, and he allows it to remain that way.

The drawing once belonged to Karl Mayländer, a Viennese Jewish collector who supported modern artists early on and recognised something in Schiele’s work long before it was widely accepted. In 1941 he was deported by the Nazis because he was Jewish, and he did not return; he was murdered during the Holocaust, and the works he had gathered were dispersed. This sheet resurfaced decades later and appeared at Sotheby’s in 1995, passing through the hands of Felix Landau and several London galleries before entering a private collection. Its path is quiet but clear, and it adds a human layer to the drawing’s history without overshadowing the figure herself.

What stays with you is the sense of a young woman caught in a moment that is neither dramatic nor staged. She stands with her hands lifted, absorbed in something small and personal, and Schiele meets her there without intruding. The drawing holds that pause gently, letting it remain what it was — a brief, unguarded moment that needed nothing more.