Portrait of the Artist's Wife 1917

Egon Schiele made this painting, ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Wife’, with watercolor and pencil, and the way he's used these materials gives it a raw, immediate feel. You can see the paper peeking through in places, like he’s sketching directly onto it, thinking out loud. I love how he captures his wife’s likeness with these quick, almost nervous lines. The colors are muted but intentional, that bright yellow sweater against the stark white collar. The hands, though, are what really get me. They’re clasped tightly, the fingers slightly distorted, conveying a sense of tension, of being present and uneasy. Schiele wasn't interested in prettifying his subjects, but instead really wanted to show the truth of their emotions and physicality. He reminds me a bit of Paula Modersohn-Becker, who also wasn't afraid to depict the body in an honest way, and I suppose both were interested in seeing how far you could push an image, while still retaining some sense of representation. Ultimately, Schiele's paintings leave us not with answers, but with a space to question.