Sale: Dorotheum, Vienna, 7th December 1973, lot 404
Piccadilly Gallery, London (acquired in 1974)
Private Collection, Europe (sold: Sotheby's, London, 6th October 1999, lot 109)
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, London, 1998, no. 889, illustrated p. 449

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, floating in the mount. This work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although the paper tone is slightly lighter and the pencil slightly stronger in the original.
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Schiele was twenty-one years old when he executed this portrait of a girl in a polka-dotted skirt and a checkered blouse. Compared to the highly charged and shockingly candid self-portraits and sketches of nude women he executed around this time, the style of the present work appears more conventional at꧅ first consideration. The contours of her body are obscured by her costume, which only reveals her hands and face, and it is through these features that Schiele exposes the intensity of his model. With her soft yet beautifully rendered lips and eyes, she confronts the viewer with an unflinching gaze. Although this portrait of a young girl does not display the open sexuality of many of Schiele's other drawings, the girl's features are rendered with a remarkable sensuality.

 

Like other drawings that Schiele executed around the same time, Mädchen mit karierter Bluse demonstrates the artist's interest in the balance of negative and positive space and the inte🙈rplay of solids and voids. Schiele pinpointed the elements of the composition that he wanted to emphasise, leaving parts of the figure devoid of any details or often not rendering them at all. In the present work, the dynamic of the composition is derived from the contrast betweeജn the richly drawn, patterned area of the girl's blouse and part of her skirt, and the softly outlined contours only suggesting the protrusion of her knees. 

 

Jane Kallir observed the following about Schiele's work on paper from this period: '1911 brought a greater level of refinement to Schiele's watercolors and drawings. As was the tendency during the first part of his career (at least until 1915), the artist rapidly passed through a number of distinct developmental stages in this single year. Drawings from early 1911 – angular and bold – contrast markedly with the soft, delicate forms of late 1911. During these twelve or so months, Schiele's figures became less jagged and boxy, more rounded and almost ethereal' (J. Kallir, Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolours, London, 2003, p. 139).