70th Birthday of Marie Schiele, with Gertrud and Melanie, 1929

Styled in the typical fashion of the 1920s, with wavy bob cuts and long pearl necklaces, Marie Schiele (1862–1935) and her two daughters are posing for a portrait – the younger daughter, Gertrude Peschka (1894–1981), is seated to her right, the elder, Melanie Schiele-Schuster (1886–1974), is standing to her left. The date “1*9*2*9” was scratched directly into the negative: This was done habitually by Anton Josef Trčka (1893–1940) in many of his photographs. Trčka, who had studied at the Training and Research Institute of Graphic Arts in Vienna from 1911 to 1914, had photographed Egon Schiele (1890–1918) as well, staging several posed photographs around 1914, such as Egon Schiele in Front of His Lost Painting “Encounter”, 1913 and Egon Schiele with Toy Horse, in the Background the Painting “Houses by the Sea”, 1914.

SH, 2024