Egon Schiele, ““Freundschaft (Friendship)”, 1913, Watercolor, Gouache and Pencil on Paper, 48.2 x 32 cm, Private Collection

“Freundschaft” is marked by the Expressionist era’s embrace of emotional experience over physical reality through its emphasis on inner experiences. Egon Schiele’s depiction of the human form is distinctly characterized by its contorted and sculptural portrayal. Rather than a literal interpretation, he elongated both limbs and torsos with some features accented and others diminished. Schiele’s dynamic line work, an essential element in his portraiture works, creates both tension and movement within the composition.

As the majority of Schiele’s work was titled posthumously, “Freundschaft” is rather unique in that he titled it himself upon completion. There is no detailed information available on the identity of the depicted figures in this mixed-media work. The couple appear to be Egon Schiele and Walburga “Wally” Neuzil, an Austrian nurse who was both lover and muse to Schiele between 1911 and 1915.

In 1911, Wally Neuzil and Egon Schiele met in Vienna; she was seventeen and he was twenty-one at that time. It is possible that they met through Gustav Klimt, Schiele’s mentor for whom Neuzil was a model. Between 1911 and 1915, Neuzil modeled for some of Schiele’s most noted paintings. They lived together unmarried in Schiele’s Vienna home and eventually settled for a short period in Neulengbach, the lower Austrian district of Sankt Pölten-Land.

After returning to Vienna, Schiele established a studio in 1914 at Hietzing, one of Vienna’s suburbs. It was there that he became attracted to and decided to marry Edith Harms, one of two sisters who lived across the street from his studio. Upon learning this, Neuzil immediately left Schiele and never saw him again. She trained as a nurse in Vienna and began working at various military hospitals in the city. While working at a hospital in the city of Sinj, Dalmatia (now Croatia), Walburga Neuzil died from scarlet fever on the twenty-fifth of December in 1917 at the age of twenty-three.

Egon Schiele presented fifty works at the 49th Vienna Secession exhibition in 1918. His showing was a success that resulted in increased prices for his work and many portrait commissions. In the autumn of 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic reached Vienna. Edith Schiele, who was six months pregnant, died from the disease on the 28th of October. Schiele, who was very sick and in a weak condition, died three days after his wife. He was twenty-eight years old.

Notes: According to art historian and curator Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele’s “Freundschaft” was rejected for exhibition on moral grounds by the Munich Secession on the third of December in 1913. It was swiftly purchased privately by Albert von Keller, the President of the Sucession, for fifty marks.

Around 1915, Johannes Fischer created a series of photographs featuring fellow painter Egon Schiele in his studio at Hietzinger Hauptstraße 101. As a colleague and friend, Fischer often exhibited with Schiele, who was two years his junior. In the article’s first insert image, Schiele is looking directly into the camera, his head slightly inclined and his forehead furrowed. The artist’s stance and expression are reminiscent of his self-portraits, such as the 1912 “Self-Portrait with Lowered Head”. The painting in the photo’s background, “Shrines in the Forest II”, is housed at the Kamm Foundation.

Top Insert Image: Johannes Fischer, “Egon Schiele with the 1915 painting ‘Shrines in the Forest II’ in the background”, 1915, Vintage Print, 16.3 x 11.2 cm, Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria

Second Insert Image: Egon Schiele, “Waldandacht II”, 1915, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 120 cm, Stiftung Sammlung Kamm

Bottom Insert Image: Egon Schiele, “Self-Portrait with Lowered Head”, 1912, Oil on Wood Panel, 337 x 422 cm, Leopold Museum, Vienna, Austria