Houses at Town Hall Square in Klosterneuburg, 1908

Not far from Klosterneuburg Abbey, where Egon Schiele (1890–1918) had taken part in his first exhibition ever from mid-May to the end of June 1908 with ten oil paintings, is the site depicted in this small oil sketch, which shows a row of houses lining the Town Hall Square of Klosterneuburg.
Schiele had moved to Klosterneuburg already in 1902, for his second high-school year, to change to the local Realgymnasium for lack of success at his previous school. In 1904, the rest of the family also moved to the small town close to Vienna. On New Year’s Eve of that same year, his father died, which was a traumatic experience for Egon. Leopold Czihaczek (1842–1929), Schiele’s very conservative uncle from his father’s side, assumed guardianship of the siblings. His new art teacher Ludwig Karl Strauch (1875–1959) soon saw the boy’s artistic gift and started mentoring him. Together with other artists, most of them older, he offered Schiele his first network in art. After Schiele had successfully applied for the Vienna Academy of Fine Art in fall 1906, his mother Marie Schiele (1862–1935) moved to Vienna with him and his sisters.

SH, 2021