Gustav Klimt Archives | Carol L. Douglas

But Egon Schiele certainly could paint a lovely boat.

Segelschiffe im wellenbewegtem Wasser (Der Hafen von Triest), 1907, Egon Schiele, private collection

I have a hard time loving the work of Egon Schiele. Erotic paintings, emaciated figures, and anguished self-portraits leave me cold. I far prefer the Expressionism of Käthe Kollwitz and Gabriele Münter. They weren’t happy, either, but at least they had something real to complain about.

Then my friend Bruce McMillan introduced me to Schiele’s boat paintings. They don’t quite make up for all those tortured people, but they’re beautifully drawn and kinetic. Interestingly, the highest auction prices for Schiele’s work are not for his erotica, but for his landscapes, including the record-setting Häuser mit bunter Wäsche ‘Vorstadt’ II, which sold for $40.1 million in 2011.

Boote im Hafen von Triest, 1908, Egon Schiele, courtesy Landesmuseum Niederösterreich

There’s no question that Schiele was a prodigy. At 16, he was the youngest student ever to enroll at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. After three years, he quit without graduating. In school and after, he was mentored by Gustav Klimt, who did much to advance his career.

“Klimt was an established star and Schiele a cocksure student when the two first met in 1908,” wroteLaura Cumming. “But it is immediately obvious… that their obsessions were already mutual.”

Klimt had innumerable affairs and fathered 14 children out of wedlock. But he was staid compared to his protégée, who was completely amoral in matters of sexuality. Schiele was incestuously attracted to his sister Gerti, to the great consternation of their father (who went on to die of syphilis himself). At age 16, Schiele took Gerti, then 12, by train to Trieste and spent the night with her.

At 21, he met Walburga (Wally) Neuzil, age 17, one of Klimt’s models. Aspiring to leave ‘repressive’ Vienna behind, the couple moved to a small Bohemian village. Driven out due to their lifestyle, they moved to slightly-larger Neulengbach. There, Schiele was accused of seducing a young girl and making pornographic images available to children. Although the rape charge was eventually dropped, he spent a month in jail for the pictures.

Dampfer und Segelboote im Hafen von Triest, watercolor, pencil and gouache on Japan paper, 1912, Egon Schiele

Back in Vienna, he wrote a friend, “I intend to get married, advantageously. Not to Wally.” Instead, he’d picked out Edith Harms, from a good middle-class family. As a former prostitute and artist’s model, Wally was a professional liability. Schiele proposed that he and Wally continue their relationship, vacationing together every summer without Edith. Wally indignantly refused.

Four days after the wedding, Egon Schiele was drafted into the army. He was given a job as a clerk in a POW camp. There, he drew and painted imprisoned Russian officers, nicking extra rations for himself and Edith on the side.

Die Brücke, 1913, Egon Schiele, private collection

By 1917, Schiele was back in Vienna. He was invited to participate in the Vienna Secession’s 49th exhibition in 1918, with a prodigious 50 works in the show. His success was spectacular. Demand—and prices—for Schiele’s work rose rapidly.

It was, alas, a short-lived triumph. In autumn of that year, Spanish flu pandemicreached Vienna. Edith and their unborn child died on October 28. Schiele lived just three days more. He was just 28.

It’s tempting to wonder what marriage, parenthood, and maturity would have done to temper the wild excesses of his youth, or how it would have changed his style. But, had he lived to ripe old age, Schiele would have also experienced the annexation of Austria by the Nazis twenty years later. It’s hard to imagine he would have prospered.

Painting composition is all about ruthless editing. It’s a creative process, and it’s based on seeing.

Bill’s Yellow (with Admiration), 2005, Cornelia Foss, Houston Museum of Fine Art

Sometimes I hand out little plastic viewfinders to my students. Mine are made of Plexiglas, roughly along the lines of this one. But they are for beginners, to help them start to break down the vastness of the landscape into palatable bites. I don’t encourage reliance on viewfinders, any more than I like working from photos. Art is based on seeing. Seeing isn’t a mechanical process; it’s a learned art.

Artwork Essential’s viewfinder is based on the Rule of Thirds. When I was in school, I was taught to divide canvases using the Golden Mean. It’s imprinted in my aesthetic, so I still see it as the most graceful compositional device. Later, I learned about Dynamic Symmetry. All of these are good working systems, and all of them are based on mathematics.

The Golden Mean is closely related to the Fibonacci Sequence.

The human mind, in receiving mode, likes to tarry on puzzles. That’s why we use these complex mathematical systems to compose our paintings. In sending and processing mode, however, the mind ruthlessly regularizes thoughts. If you’ve ever tried to paint a screen of branches as in the Klimt painting below, you know this to be true. You must fight to keep them honest. Left to its own devices, your subconscious mind will line them up like little soldiers.

We “know” compositional rules, and then we see a painting like Cornelia Foss’ Bill’s Yellow (with Admiration) and we realize that all such rules can be set on their heads. Ms. Foss isn’t ignorant of design systems; in fact she knows them so well that she can play with them. Bill’s Yellow wouldn’t have been nearly the painting had she offset the brush and tree in a conventional way. It is monumental because she centered and overlaid them.

Beech Grove I, 1902, Gustav Klimt, New Masters Gallery, Dresden.

Compositions designed with mechanical devices are ‘safer,’ but they eliminate the space needed to make creative discoveries. I greatly admire the work of painter Mary Byrom. Having now known her personally for several years, I know she endlessly experiments with composition and form. She isn’t getting those arresting compositions by setting up with a viewfinder; she gets them by slogging through damp marshes at twilight, and endlessly tinkering.

Early Dusk, Mary Byrom

“Plein air painting is like a test you take in class,” Brad Marshall told me. “You have to use your knowledge and finish by the end of the class period. There’s no credit for incomplete answers.

“Studio paintings are like essays. You have enough time to do your research, write and rewrite until the work is good enough to turn in.”

There’s room for both in professional painting, but for learning and growth, working from life is critical. That’s why I strongly discourage working from photos in my studio classes. Photos have already done the most important job for the painter: flat-packing the scene.

Confronted with the vastness of reality, all artists must relentlessly, ruthlessly edit what they see into a working design. With photographs, that is already done. And there’s no guarantee that it has been done well.

Come paint with me in my studio in Rockport, ME or my workshop at Acadia National Park.

Category: Gustav Klimt

One messed-up dude

Flat-packing the landscape