A newly discovered Egon Schiele – portrait of the „Rainer boy“(1910)
When looking through the Munich private collection of Wilhelm Denzel, we were able to discover some real treasures, precisely from the period of early modernism. It is now the third time that our house will auction drawings and prints of this rich collection. Nobody could expect however to find a work by Egon Schiele among the numerous interesting leaves.
The drawing which was discovered at the beginning of this year and recognized meanwhile as genuine by the worldwide renowned Schiele expert, Mrs. Jane Kallir, dates from 1910, the great phase of the artist’s upheaval in style, named the “expressive breakthrough”. The almost constrained attitude of the little boy is outlined in strong, concise contours, the eyes strongly highlighted, the facial expression therefore of great intensity and directness. As on many leaves, Schiele used the shiny side of a piece of dark packing paper for his pencil drawing and signed it with monogram and date “S.10”. A drawing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York is very similar to ours, not only in its drawing style, but also in the physiognomy of the portrayed person. This portrait is identified as the boy Herbert Rainer, portrayed by Schiele several times, once even in a painting. The perspective however is different: the New York drawing shows the “Rainer boy” from above, in our drawing the boy is seen from below, similar to the drawing of three street kids from the same year 1910 which is now in the Vienna Albertina. Among these three kids the boy on the left has the biggest resemblance with the boy in our drawing.
Therefore this leaf belongs to the group of works of the year 1910 when Schiele portrayed and sketched children from the neighbourhood and street kids. The artistic upheaval is evident: stylistic ruptures, deviations and hardness not only recognizable in the expressive physiognomy, but precisely in the details such as the Schiele-typical hands and fingers.
Wilhelm Denzel included this drawing in his collection, composed normally of more pleasant leaves, primarily for two reasons: firstly the time of origin is Denzel’s preferred period of graphic art from ca. 1890-1930, when he collected only figurative, not abstract works; on the other hand the drawing met his special predilection for caricature, because Schiele’s expressive alienations, though not meant as such, show definitely certain parallels to the caricaturing art of this epoch. It is possible that the drawing came into Denzel’s possession through one of his many friends, dealers of graphic art or collectors, at a time when Schiele was still quite unknown, probably before the Second World War. The drawing was found piled up between other leaves in a passe-partout, thus protected from damaging light and remained therefore in a very good condition. A special even sensational find which broadens our knowledge in one aspect about the work of the famous Vienna artist.