Leaning Female Nude, 1919

This female nude dating from 1919 is a preparatory study for Herbert Boeckl’s painting Small Nude (on the Back of a Chair), which is privately owned. Together with Reclining Female Nude (White Nude), which is part of the Leopold Museum’s collection, this oil painting belongs to a small series of four canvases from the artist’s early creative period. The works in this series stand out from the artist’s oeuvre and are characterized by a much brighter color palette and highly stylized depictions rendered in loose brushstrokes. It seems as if the artist had for a short period of time transferred the loose and weightless style of his graphic works to the canvas.
In the painting Small Nude, Boeckl copied the body posture of the present sketch, especially with regard to the arms, while the right leg is straightened and stretched out to the front.

KJ, 2023