Page from a Sketchbook with a Compositional Draft and Color Indications, c. 1913

Egon Schiele’s (1890–1918) sketches often paved the way for his pictorial ideas, and are directly related to paintings. Many of these ideas were only quickly jotted down, however, without us being able to discern any visible connections. There is a striking number of outlined compositional sketches for paintings that were never realized, especially for landscapes. This outlined landscape sketch hails from a sketchbook *Egon Schiele’s Sketchbook *, dated 1912–14, and shows meadows and fields with two trollies in the foreground against a mountainscape backdrop. A more detailed rendering of one of these trollies appears underneath the framed sketch. Schiele’s extant sketch- and notebooks – to date, there are 23 known ones – illustrate his compositional approach and document the color combinations he had in mind. In this example, too, there are two color indications on the edge of the page.

LScr, 2024