Egon Schiele

(Tulln 1890–1918 Vienna)
Porträt des Leutnants Ernö Fekete (Portrait of Lt Ernö Fekete), signed and dated EGON SCHIELE 1916, titled Lt. Fekete Mühling N.Ö., estate stamp on the reverse, pencil on paper, 45.8 x 29.6 cm
Listed and illustrated:
Jane Kallir, Egon Schiele. The complete works, New York 1990, cat. rais. no. D 1850, ill. p. 564

Provenance:
Estate of the artist
Gertrude Schiele-Peschka (1894–1981), Vienna
Sale, Sotheby’s, London, 25 June 1986, lot 369
Private Collection, Austria

Egon Schiele was in the same barracks in Mühling, Lower Austria, as Lt. Fekete, whom he drew on July 16, 1916. (Nebehay, Egon Schiele. 1890–1918, Life, Letters, Poems, Salzburg, Vienna 1979, no. 1057.)

From May 1916, Egon Schiele served as a soldier in the provisions office of the Mühling prisoner-of-war camp near Wieselburg in Lower Austria. This change in his circumstances prompted him to focus his attention on the portraits of his army superiors and comrades. They first exude the detached professionalism apparent in many of the later commissions. (cf. Kallir, 1990, p. 560)

Schiele places the portrait of the Hungarian lieutenant in the center of the large sheet. The emptiness draws attention to the bright, somewhat squinting eyes under long eyelashes. The painter captures the moustache and forehead hair in almost ornamental quick lines, emphasizing youth, beauty and a charming uncertainty.