Self-Portrait

Egon Schiele

National Gallery of Art

A man with large, dark eyes glowers at us from under black brows, one of which is lowered and the other cocked in this drawn, vertical portrait. The man’s face is angled slightly to our left, but he looks out with his red lips twisted up to our right. The planes of his cheeks, lines across his forehead, nose, and thin, narrow chin are painted lightly and broadly with pale gray and pale pink to suggest light skin tone and shadows. His black hair is tousled, and the open collar of his shirt is suggested with a few lines sketched in graphite and emphasized with strokes of black paint. The artist signed and dated the drawing to the right, “EGON SHIELE 1912.”