Egon Schiele:
Gerti Schiele at the age of 8 (Gerti Schiele im Alter von acht Jahren), 1903
Pencil on paper
17.5 × 11.6 cm
Auctioned at Dorotheum in 2022 for EUR 76,800
(Kallir d1)

Executed on 15 March 1903, this small pencil drawing represents one of the earliest documented examples of Schiele’s draftsmanship. At the time of its creation, the artist was twelve years old, living with his family at the railway station in Tulln, where his father, Adolf Schiele, served as stationmaster. The lower margin of the sheet features the inscription Schiele Eg pinxit 15. III. 1903. The use of the traditional Latin term pinxit (painted by) suggests that the young Schiele was already studying academic art prints or instructional manuals. This formal signature indicates an early sense of artistic identity that preceded his academic training at the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna.

Before focusing on figurative subjects, Schiele’s early childhood drawings consisted almost entirely of highly detailed depictions of trains, tracks, and station infrastructure. While these earliest childhood sketches of trains survive as historical artifacts, they are omitted from the academic catalog raisonné. Jane Kallir begins her scientific classification of Schiele’s graphic oeuvre with this portrait of Gerti, marking it as the official starting point of his conscious artistic identity. The preservation of this 1903 sheet is noteworthy within the artist’s biography; his father, suffering from deteriorating mental health due to advanced syphilis, frequently opposed his son’s artistic ambitions and burned many of Schiele’s early sketchbooks in an attempt to steer him toward a career in rail production.

The subject of the drawing is the artist’s younger sister, Gertrude (Gerti) Schiele, who was eight years old at the time. During this childhood period, Schiele used his sisters, Melanie and Gerti, interchangeably as models for his initial figurative studies. The linear execution in this work shows a structured, observational approach to portraiture. Rather than relying on the fluid, expressionistic contours that defined his mature career after 1910, this 1903 sheet demonstrates a traditional, academic technique focused on capturing accurate facial proportions.

Gerti Schiele remained a central figure throughout the formative years of her brother’s career. She functioned as his primary model during his transition into Expressionism, a collaborative dynamic that continued until her marriage to Schiele’s close friend and fellow artist, Anton Peschka, in 1914. While the physical paper shows minor signs of aging consistent with its historic provenance, the structural integrity of the line work remains clear, documenting the precise baseline from which Schiele’s technical skills developed.

The historic frame of the artwork preserves a prolonged pencil inscription on the reverse side: “Gertrude Schiele geb. 13 Juli 1894 i. Tulln (Bahnhof) gezeichnet vom Bruder Bahnhof Tulln Egon Schiele 12 Jahre geb. 12 Juni 1890 in Tulln (Bahnhof)”. This notation provides a verifiable biographical record connecting both children directly to their birthplace and the specific environment of the Tulln railway station. The physical preservation of this frame maintains the direct provenance link to the Schiele family estate.

In the catalogue raisonné compiled by Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works (1990), this specific sheet is cataloged as number d1. As the very first entry in the drawing section, it serves as the official starting point for the scholarly documentation of Schiele’s graphic oeuvre.