Egon Schiele:
Embrace (Umarmung), 1915
Black crayon
44.8 × 30.9 cm
© Albertina, Vienna
(Kallir d1793)

Schiele made several drawings that fall into the category of ‘embracing’. In her catalogue raisonné, Jane Kallir notes that the identity of the male figure shifts in the studies from this period. At times, the features resemble Paul Erdmann, a nephew of Schiele’s wife, Edith. At other moments, however, the figure seems unmistakably close to Schiele himself, as if he allowed the boundary between intimate observation and self-portraiture to blur. The woman is easily recognized as Edith Schiele, her features rendered with the familiar mixture of tenderness and quiet gravity that marks Schiele’s depictions of her.

In this sheet, the embrace feels both protective and searching. The emotional temperature of the drawing is closely linked to the reality of 1915. It was a tumultuous year for the young couple; they married in June, and a mere four days later, Schiele was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army as the First World War intensified. Their bodies fold into one another with a kind of hesitant closeness, as though the gesture is meant to steady them against the profound uncertainties of wartime.

Technically, the drawing derives its power from the raw immediacy of the black crayon. The lines are pressed firmly enough to suggest urgency, yet they remain sensitive in the way they follow the curve of Edith’s shoulder or the tilt of her head. By leaving the background entirely empty, Schiele places the figures in an isolated space where only their proximity offers shelter. This focus on the physical and psychological union of two figures would later culminate in his monumental oil painting Die Umarmung (The Embrace), 1917 (Kallir P304).

Seen in relation to this drawing — with its figure holding a child in a similarly protective arc — the protective motif that Schiele explored throughout 1915 becomes even more apparent, revealing a sustained interest in gestures of sheltering closeness.