Letter from Egon Schiele to Carl Reininghaus, 27th Feb. 1912

In this letter Egon Schiele writes to Carl Reininghaus about his painting “Eremiten”.

Transcription:

Dear Karl Reininghaus! I gladly admit that you are right at the moment; in the large painting one does not notice right away how exactly the two are standing, but it is good that the flowers are not harsh, that there are too many flowers seems to me unnecessary. – But I want to say a few things about the ideas in the painting which justify a lot, maybe everything, not only for me but also for the observer. – It is not a gray sky, rather a mourning world in which the two bodies find themselves, they grew up alone in it, came organically from the ground; together with the figures, the entire world should represent the “decrepitude” of all beings; one sole withered rose that exhales its white innocence, opposed to the wreath-flowers on both heads. –
The left one is the one who is bending over in front of such a serious world, his flowers should seem cold, pitiless, annihilated flowers I would like to say, or compare them to the similar loud words of a critically ill person who can only stammer anymore, hollow and raspy; I am quite satisfied with the way the flowers are painted here, there really could be fewer; but the way I painted them so pale is intentional, otherwise the poetic idea and vision would be lost, just like how the figures remain indeterminable, they were intended to look buckled under, the bodies of those who are tired of life, suicidal, and yet bodies full of sentiment. – Think of the two figures as a cloud of dust similar to the earth which desires to amass and must collapse for lack of power. – In another picture that is not going to have the same meaning, the position of the figures will be stressed, but that should not be the case here. – I could not have painted this picture from one day to the next, but rather on account of my experiences over several years, from the death of my father on; I painted more of a vision than according to drawings. – Perhaps now you can understand it better, I do not know, I had to paint the picture, regardless of whether it is artistically good or bad, but if you knew just how the world appears to me and how people have treated me up to now, by which I mean insincerely, then this is just the direction I have to take and paint pictures which are of value only to me. It emerged solely out of intimacy. – I see that you want to be entirely candid with me, I am too, because I would not change anything about the painting.
Sending you warm greetings!
Egon Schiele.