Nancy Scheer

1910 marked Egon Schiele’s so-called “Expressionist breakthrough,” the point at which his pictorial style became abruptly, radically personal. Rendering his subjects in bold, angular lines with unnatural coloration, the young Austrian artist embarked on an earnest interrogation of pose and gesture as signifiers of character and psychological state. Schiele himself modeled for many such exploratory works, producing several dozen self-portraits in this year alone.

“Self-Portrait in Brown Coat” shows Schiele in three-quarter-length, with much of his torso exposed. Assured and apparently smirking, he seeks out the viewer’s gaze. The white heightening about his head creates a sharp distinction between his face and the relatively dark paper on which it's drawn, intensifying the impact of the likeness. Similar "body haloes" recur in other figural works through 1911.

Image: Egon Schiele, “Self-Portrait in Brown Coat,” 1910, gouache, watercolor, and black crayon with white heightening on paper.

Sotheby’s has landed one of the biggest consignments announced yet for the November sales in New York: $400 million in art from the collection of Leonard Lauder, who died in July at 92.⁠
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The crown jewel of the tranche of artworks is likely to be the crown jewel of the November auctions more broadly: Gustav Klimt‘s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” (1914–16). According to the New York Times, which first reported the news, the painting is expected to more than $150 million and is thought to be one of the few full-length Klimt portraits still held privately.⁠
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Speaking to the Times, Sotheby’s chief executive seemed confident, saying of the Lauder sale, “I think we’re going to make history with this collection. It will be something talked about for a long time.”⁠
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Read more: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/leonard-lauder-sothebys-klimt-matisse-1234751922/