Schwangere Frau mit Kind auf dem Arm 1912

Egon Schiele made this drawing of a pregnant woman with child, using watercolor and pencil. It’s all about process, seeing how the lines emerge, finding the form. Look at the marks, how they build up into a tender portrayal of mother and child. The color is so delicate, barely there, just a blush of pink and yellow. The lines are tentative, searching, but they capture the weight of the pregnant form, the way the child clings to her mother. I love how the watercolor washes create this soft, luminous effect, like a memory or a dream. The way Schiele uses line is really interesting, especially around the belly and legs. It’s almost like he's mapping out the body, feeling the contours, the weight. And the little details, like the tiny foot of the child pressed against the mother's back, are so touching. You can see echoes of Klimt in the decorative quality of the lines, but Schiele’s got a rawness, an emotional intensity that’s all his own. Ultimately, it is the ambiguity in Schiele's rendering which makes the work so engaging.