Semi Nude with Colored skirt and Raised Arms 1911

Egon Schiele made this watercolor, Semi Nude with Colored Skirt and Raised Arms, which is now in a private collection. Imagine Schiele in his studio, maybe a bit cramped, definitely intense. He’s got this model sitting for him, and he’s trying to capture something raw, something real. The strokes are quick, almost frantic, aren't they? You can see the urgency in the way he’s laid down the color, especially that red skirt—it's like a splash of emotion right there in the middle of the paper. I think he's wrestling with how to represent the human form, not just what it looks like, but what it feels like to be in a body, to have these long limbs. There is an echo of Munch and Klimt in Schiele, but he adds this really unnerving vulnerability to the history of figurative painting. It’s like he’s saying, "Here we are, exposed, in conversation, with the long tradition of painting."