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Autumn Tree in Stirred Air (Winter Tree), 1912

Leopold Museum,
Vienna
Oil, pencil on canvas
80×80.5 cm

Artists

  • Egon Schiele

    (Tulln 1890–1918 Vienna)

Unfortunately not on display at the moment
Windswept, the bare tree extends in the gray facets of the sky. Its whitewashed trunk blends with the background and emphasizes the isolation of the nervous branches that grow through the picture plane as almost abstract lines. A horizontal streak on the lower edge of the picture serves as an abbreviation of the soil. The hills on the far horizon are equally stylized. In his landscape depictions, Egon Schiele (1890–1918) reaches an intensity of expression that rivals that of his portraits and self-portraits. The key to this is his anthropomorphic rendering of nature, which he inscribes with human shapes and emotions. Like Small Tree in Late Autumn, created shortly before, the painting Autumn Tree in Stirred Air (Winter Tree), which was bought by Magda Mautner Markhof (1881–1944) a few months after its first presentation at the Hagenbund in 1912, is not a genuine landscape. Rather, the tree in its bareness and isolation embodies the feeling of being exposed and lonely – and the will to survive. In his essay Egon Schieles Weg und Ziel, which was published in the catalogue for the artist’s posthumous solo exhibition at the Neue Galerie in Vienna in 1923, art historian Kurt Rathe (1886–1952) identified in Schiele’s landscapes “the special atmospheric magic of a moribund nature,” adding that they depict “infinitely sensitive organisms, whose fibrillar nervous system is for instance represented by the grid of a fence, telegraph wires and the wispy branches of leafless trees.”

VG, 2022

Object data

Artist/author
  • Egon Schiele
Title
Autumn Tree in Stirred Air (Winter Tree)
Date
1912
Art movement
Expressionism
Category
Painting
Material​/technique
Oil, pencil on canvas
Dimensions
80×80.5 cm
Signature
Signed and dated center right: EGON SCHIELE 1912
Credit line
Leopold Museum, Vienna, Inv. 449
Inventory access
Contributed to the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung in 1994
Selection of Reference works
  • Rudolf Leopold: Egon Schiele. Gemälde, Aquarelle, Zeichnungen, hrsg. von Elisabeth Leopold, München 2020.
  • Tobias Natter: Egon Schiele, Sämtliche Gemälde 1909-1918, Köln 2017.
  • Wally Neuzil. Ihr Leben mit Egon Schiele, hrsg. von Diethard Leopold/Stephan Pumberger u.a., Wien 2015 (Ausst.-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 27.02.2015-01.06.2015).
  • Trotzdem Kunst! Österreich 1914-1918, hrsg. von Elisabeth Leopold/Ivan Ristić u.a., Wien 2014 (Ausst-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 09.05.2014-15.09.2014).
  • Wolken. Welt des Flüchtigen, hrsg. von Tobias Natter, Ostfildern 2013 (Ausst.-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 22.03.2013-01.07.2013).
  • Egon Schiele. Melancholie und Provokation, hrsg. von Elisabeth/Diethard Leopold, Wien 2011 (Ausst.-Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 23.09.2011–19.04.2012).
  • Egon Schiele Landschaften, hrsg. von Rudolf Leopold, München u.a. 2004 (Ausst. Kat. Leopold Museum, Wien, 17.09.2004-31.01.2005).
  • Jane Kallir: Egon Schiele - The complete works. Expanded edition including a biography and a catalogue raisonné, New York 1998.
  • Otto Kallir: Egon Schiele. Oeuvre Catalogue of the Paintings, New York 1966.
  • Otto Nirenstein: Egon Schiele. Persönlichkeit und Werk, Berlin 1930.
Catalogue raisonne
  • J. Kallir 1990/1998: P239
  • Leopold 1972/2020: 221
  • Natter 2017: 93
  • O. Kallir 1966: 166
  • O. Kallir (Nirenstein) 1930: 118
Keywords
landscape representationtreewinterNatureearth: soil typelonelinessfugacity/passing of timeMagda Mautner Markhofautumn

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Provenance

Provenance research
Leopold Museum i

Magda Mautner-Markhof, Wien u. Salzburg (1912-1944); (1)
Dr. Klaus Grasmayer, Salzburg (1944-1954); (2)
Dr. Rudolf Leopold, Wien (1954-1994); (3)
Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung, Wien (1994).

  1. Christian M. Nebehay, Egon Schiele 1890-1918. Leben Briefe Gedichte, Salzburg u. Wien 1979, S. 232, Nr. 424, Magda Mautner-Markhof an Egon Schiele vom 09.10.1912
  2. Michael Wladika, Egon Schiele. Herbstbaum in bewegter Luft. Dossier zu „LM Inv. Nr. 449“ vom 30.06.2010, S. 9
  3. Archiv des Leopold Museums, Kaufvertrag vom 23.08.1954

For provenance related information, please contact us.

Search in collection

landscape representationtreewinterNatureearth: soil typelonelinessfugacity/passing of timeMagda Mautner Markhofautumn

2023/2024 Partial funding for digitization by the Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport „Kulturerbe digital“ as part of NextGenerationEU.