The Self-Seers

Otto Kallir 1930:

Two frontal, kneeling, male nudes. The back figure is largely covered by the front one. The left hands are raised with spread fingers. The front figure has slightly overturned a dark red cloth, from which the left hand sticks out. Dark background, interrupted behind the heads by a triangular white area, sign. p. (pink) height 8o cm, width 79,7 cm, 1908

Jane Kallir: Egon Schiele, The Complete Works 1998, New York №:174 (fig. 47)

The Self-Seers 1, Die Selbstseher 1

Nirenstein 73, KaIlir 113, Leopold 161

initialed "S." and dated, lower right (80 x 79.7 cm)

Comments:

Schiele apparently considered this double selfportrait a breakthrough and soon after cornpleting it in Decernber 1910, he asked Arthur Roessler to make sure it went tu a suitable collector (Nebehay, 1979, #151). Reichel bought it for 100 kronen shortly thereafter (ibid., #169), and it was probably to this or P. 191 that Schiele was referring when he wrote him on Januarv 31, 1911: ,,Without meaning to flatter you, I know of no greater Viennese art connoisseur than you. Therefore I have chosen you to receive this picture from mv newest series—In time, you will be completelv won over by it, as soon as you begin not to look at it, but to look into lt. This is the picture of which G(ustav) Klimt remarked that he was happy to see such faces. lt is certainly the best thing that has been painted in Vienna latelv“ (ibid., #176). At Schiele‘s request Reichel allowed the painting to be offered for sale at 350 marks in Munich in 1912, but it was returned unsold in January/ 1913 (ibid #435, 442). Schiele continued to explore the theme of the doppelgänger in several 1911 paintings.