Egon Schiele:
Little Tree with Support (Junges Bäumchen mit Stütze), 1912
Pencil and opaque colors on Japan paper
48 cm x 32 cm
©Albertina, Vienna
(Kallir d1213

In 1912, Egon Schiele’s landscape work underwent a clear change. Instead of turning nature into large, symbolic arrangements, sheets like Junges Bäumchen mit Stütze show the artist recording a single plant with direct precision. Drawn on thin Japan paper with soft pencil and light layers of gouache, this work leaves complex studio compositions behind to look closely at a lone sapling tied to a wooden stake.

The Date Debate: Spring vs. Summer

Dating this specific sheet has divided Schiele experts. Some argued that the drawing was an early 1912 sketch for the oil painting Autumn Sun and Trees (Sonne und Herbstbäume), which Schiele sold to Fritz Wärndorfer in April of that year.

However, a closer look at the drawing undermines this theory. The branches are clearly growing fresh, bright green leaves, which directly contradicts the autumn theme of the Wärndorfer painting. Modern analysis by Klaus Albrecht Schröder places the work in the summer of 1912, after Schiele was released from his brief imprisonment in Neulengbach. The loose, light pencil lines match studies Schiele made during a summer trip near Lake Constance, making a warm-weather date much more likely than a winter one.

Placement on the Page

Visually, the drawing avoids the standard rules Schiele used to make his pictures look stable. In other drawings from that time, like Chestnut Tree at Lake Constance, he balanced the vertical tree against the straight horizontal line of the lake shore. Here, that grounding line is missing.

The sapling grows straight out of the bottom edge of the paper, with no horizon, background, or soil to hold it in place. The main trunk curves slightly, avoiding a stiff, geometric layout.

By leaving most of the paper completely blank, Schiele shows a simple reality: a young plant that cannot stand upright without an artificial prop. It makes one wonder about Schiele’s own state of mind just months after leaving his prison cell. Did he see this wooden support as a restriction, or as a necessary help to survive? Is this sapling growing stronger into the open air, or will it always depend on the prop that keeps it from falling?