Sale: Dorotheum, Vienna, 27th November 2007, lot 5
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down and floating in the mount. The sheet is time stained. There is a crease with associated creases running down the left edge, and an additional crease towards the right edge. Some minor creases along the top edge and lower right corner near the signature. There is a small tear to the top right near the inscription approximately 1cm in length and appears to have started from an artist pinhole. There are minor nicks to the paper along all four edges. There are several repaired tears, mostly to the right edge - the longest is approximately 7cm in length. Overall fairly good condition.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This tranquil landscape was executed shortly after Schiele had enrolled at Vienna’s prestigious Akademie der bildenden Künste. At just sixteen, Schiele was the youngest student at the Akademie, and his work from this time, such as this view of Vienna’s famous Kahlenberg Mountain, is very different from the aesthetic he is generally associated with.  Yet, in fact, Schiele painted more landscapes in oil than he ever did figure works (though drawings, watercolours and gouaches of bodies far outnumber his landscape paintings). He was a prolific landscape painter, and early postcard views of his native Austria suggest a young man enamoured by the natural world; Otto Kunz, a friend from Schiele’s youth reported that as a boy Schiele simply ‘spent every free hour outside […] filling pages and pages of his sketchbooks’ (quoted in Alessandra Comini, Egon Schiele’s Portraits, Berkeley, 1974, p. 11).

With its soft atmospheric perspective and reductive use of line, Der Kahlenberg serves as a paragon of Schiele’s early attempts to improve his technical skills whilst at the conservative Akademie. Indeed, this landscape is, superficially, rather conventional. But, Schiele’s commitment to landscape painting plays a more profound role in the painter’s early œuvre. By grappling with landscape, Schiele was facing a history of traditional painting head on with the developing dialect of an early Modernist. Here, Schiele’s soon-to-be-standard daubed brushwork begins to emerge, as does his self-assured line on the little houses in the middle distance. Kimberly A. Smith has suggested that early landscapes such as this indicate that Schiele ‘saw previous movements and styles not as necessarily impoverished or defunct but as possible sources from which to cultivate his own work’ (Kimberly A. Smith, Between Ruin and Renewal: Egon Schiele’s Landscapes, L𒁃ondon, 2004, p.21); certainly this early work constitutes one of Schiele’s first attempts to reinterpret the art of the past into his own Mode🦂rnist vernacular.