Marie (Married Name Schiele) and Karoline Soukup, untitled

This photograph shows Marie (1862–1935) and Karoline Soukup, Egon Schiele’s mother and her sister. Marie, sitting on an upholstered chair, and Karoline, her right forearm resting on the chair’s headrest, are looking in the direction of the camera with a gentle but impersonal expression, slightly past the lens towards the right. Each girl’s left foot is resting on a round cushion on the floor, a gesture that seems to demonstrate sisterly closeness. The sisters grew up in Krumau on the Vltava in Southern Bohemia, and hailed from a wealthy family who could afford such portrait photographs of their offspring. Marie was the eldest daughter of seven children born to the master builder Johann Franz Soukup (1842–1898) and his wife Aloisia née Poferl (1844–1920). The father had amassed a sizeable fortune through the major railway projects of the time. At the age of only 17, Marie married Adolf Eugen Schiele (1850–1905), apparently without her parents’ approval.

MA, 2023