Houses by the Sea (Row of Houses), 1914

A row of houses seen from the front, with the individual buildings lined up like pearls, traverses this 1914 painting like a horizontal belt. The picture elements below and above it follow the principle of horizontal layering, generating an impressive example of the flat spaces that dominate the compositions of Egon Schiele (1890–1918) in this period. Proximity and distance are suggested without the means of perspective. This is achieved by making the streaks of terrain in the lower half of the work narrower than the areas of water and sky in the background, which thus appear farther away. The five houses standing next to each other are depicted in distinctive isolation in this indefinable landscape between sky, sea and fields; the cellular connection between buildings in works such as The Small Town III seems far away. The notion of isolation is further enhanced by the anthropomorphic rendering of the houses, turning facades into pale faces and windows into eyes and mouths.

VG, 2022

Additional Text according to Settlement, June 2012:
« Eugenie “Jenny” Steiner, née Pulitzer (1863–1958), was the owner of a silk manufactory and an art collector. In 1938, immediately after the Anschluss, she fled from the National Socialists to Paris, later emigrating to the USA. Egon Schiele’s cityscape Houses by the Sea (Row of Houses), a painting from Jenny Steiner’s collection, was confiscated and sold by the National Socialists in 1938. It was put up for auction at the Dorotheum in 1940, but initially found no buyer. In 1941, it was put up for auction again at the Dorotheum and purchased by Josefine Ernst. Her son, Johann Ernst, sold the painting to Rudolf Leopold in 1955. Since then, the painting Houses by the Sea (Row of Houses) has belonged to the core of the Leopold Collection for Rudolf Leopold, who successfully championed the work of Egon Schiele throughout his life.
Since the painting is undoubtedly the property of the Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung, but it was just as clearly seized from Jenny Steiner in 1938, it was an important concern of the Leopold Museum to find a joint solution with the heirs after Jenny Steiner.
After long negotiations, it was initially possible in 2011 to reach a fair and equitable solution with Jenny Steiner’s only granddaughter.
In 2012, a joint solution was also found with the other groups of heirs. »