Porträt Arthur Roessler 1910

Egon Schiele painted this portrait of Arthur Roessler using oil on canvas. The textured surface is not incidental. It speaks to Schiele’s direct engagement with the material properties of paint. See how the pigment has been dragged across the surface, almost like plaster on a wall? There is a real interest here in a kind of roughness, a raw quality, and a very tactile quality, especially in the way that the subject’s hands are rendered. This echoes the unvarnished emotionality that Schiele sought to capture. We can also consider the social implications of Schiele’s approach. By emphasizing the physical properties of paint, and the labor involved in its application, he moved away from the notion of art as purely an intellectual pursuit. This resonates with the broader cultural shifts occurring at the time, as artists began to question traditional hierarchies between art and craft.