Portrait of Dr. Viktor Ritter von Bauer 1917

Egon Schiele made this portrait of Dr. Viktor Ritter von Bauer, but the date and the medium are unknown. Schiele's lines are so restless, it's like he's trying to pin down not just what Dr. Bauer looks like, but what it *feels* like to be him. There’s such a starkness, an almost brutal honesty, in the way he renders the contours of the face. See those red marks around the eyes and cheek? It's like he's flaying the skin. The colours seem to be both there and not there, transparent, floating. The hand is kind of splayed, those fingers all stretched and a little bit anxious. Everything feels a little bit raw, a little bit exposed, like we’re seeing more than we should. It reminds me a little of some of Francis Bacon's portraits. You know, that same willingness to push the boundaries of what a portrait can be, what it can reveal about the human condition. It's never just about capturing a likeness; it's about digging deeper, into the messiness and the ambiguity of being alive.