The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of September 21, 2023

Portrait of a Child (Anton Peschka, Jr.)

1916

Egon Schiele

(Austrian, 1890–1918)

Austria, 20th century

Gouache, watercolor, and graphite

Support: Beige(1) wove paper, discolored to yellow-beige

Sheet: 49.9 x 32.2 cm (19 5/8 x 12 11/16 in.)

Severance and Greta Millikin Collection 1964.285

Catalogue raisonné: Kallir 1814

Location

not on view

Fun Fact

The child seen in this drawing, Anton Peschka Jr., served as a model for several compositions by Egon Schiele.

Description

Egon Schiele depicted a small child, the son of a friend, in this drawing devoid of setting. The child teeters at an awkward angle, seemingly unsupported but for a multipatterned fabric wrap that occupies the artist’s primary interest. This contorted pose is typical of Schiele’s many drawings of people in which he explored the expressive capacity of the human form, often using the body to indicate their psychic state (see another drawing by Schiele nearby). He died in the Spanish influenza epidemic in 1918 at age 28, leaving a vast number of drawings.

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed, lower right, in graphite: egon / schiele 1916 [enclosed in a box]; verso, lower right, in graphite: Serena Lederer

Provenance
by 1917-before 1959
Lederer family, Vienna, sold to Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich 1
?-1959
(Walter Feilchenfeldt, Zurich, sold to Severance and Greta Millikin, Cleveland, OH)
1959-1964
Severance and Greta Millikin, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
1964-
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH

Provenance Footnotes

1 According to inscription on verso.
Citations
Schiele, Egon. Zeichnungen Egon Schiele: 12 Blatter in Originalgrosse. Vienna: Richard Lanyi, 1917. Reproduced: plate 10
Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Exh. Cat. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990. Mentioned: p. 8-9; Reproduced: p. 42, no. 236
Kallir, Jane. Egon Schiele: The Complete Works. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 560, no. 1814
DeGrazia, Diane and Carter E. Foster. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with Rizzoli International Publications, New York, 2000. Mentioned: p. 7, p. 236-37, p. 297; Reproduced: p. 237
Exhibition history

Secession im Glaspalast. Kunstausstellungsgebäude, Munich (1917).

Possibly exhibited.

The Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 5-September 2, 1990).

Directions in Drawing: 1750-1988. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 2-August 4, 1991).

Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000); The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY (May 23-August 19, 2001); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (October 14, 2001-January 6, 2002).

Graphic Discontent: German Expressionism on Paper. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (January 14-May 27, 2018).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1964.285