Connoisseurs of the New

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Egon Schiele, [Fig. 2], whose earliest mature works strongly echoed those of his great mentor and patron Gustav Klimt, before he found an expressive, sensual, visceral voice all of his own, was an artist widely admired by Austrian-Jewish collectors, who were major patrons of his art in Vienna until the Anschluss of Austria of March 1938.

LV Schiele Fig. 2 -Egon Schiele with the Painting _Shrines in the Forest II_, 1915, in the background – Leopold Museum Online Collection — Fig. 2
Johannes Fischer, *Portrait of Egon Schiele* with the painting *Shrines in the Forest II*, 1915, in the background, 1915.
Digital image: Belvedere, Vienna

‘The painter is not quite the artist. It is the Spirit that created Art.’

Egon Schiele to his wife Edith, 30 May 1917

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Some important early patrons and supporters of Schiele’s work were the collector and art dealer Lea Bondi-Jaray (1880–1969). the graphic artist Benedikt Fred Dolbin (né Pollak, 1883–1971) [Fig. 3], the cabaret star Fritz Grünbaum (1880–1941) and the textiles trader and antiques dealer Karl Grünwald (1899–1964), [Fig. 1, Fig. 4].

LV Schiele Fig. 3 - Schiele, Selbstbildnis mit Modell (Fragment), 1913 — Fig. 3
Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Self Portrait with Model (Fragment)*, 1913. Oil on canvas. Christie’s New York, 8 May 2023. Restituted to the heir of Karl Mayländer, 2016. Photo: courtesy Richard Nagy Ltd., London

LV Schiele Fig. 4 - Schiele, Portrait Karl Grünwald — Fig. 4 Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Portrait of Karl Grünwald*, 1917. Oil on canvas, 140,7 x 110,2 cm. Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Nagoya, Japan. Digital image: Kallir Research Institute / Bridgeman Images

Another notable early supporter of Schiele, and a close friend of his, was the art historian and critic Arthur Roessler (1877–1950) [Fig. 5], with his translator wife Ida (née Lange, 1877–1961) [Fig. 6]. Arthur and Ida were both portrayed by Schiele, Arthur more than once [Fig. 7].

LV Schiele Fig. 5 - Schiele, Portrait Arthur Roessler, 1914, etching. Photo Wien Museum Online Sammlung 94262 — Fig. 5 Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Portrait of Arthur Roessler*, 1914. Etching.
Digital image: Wien Museum

LV Schiele Fig. 6 -Schiele, Portrait Ida Roessler. Photo Wien museum — Fig. 6 Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Portrait of Ida Roessler*, 1912. Oil on wood.
Digital image: Wien Museum

LV Schiele Fig. 7 - Arthur Roessler’s studio, Billrothstrasse 9, after 1913. Photo Wien museum — Fig. 7 Arthur Roessler’s studio, Billrothstrasse 9, after 1913.
On the wall Schiele’s *Portrait of Ida Roessler* and Schiele’s painting *Setting Sun*

Standing alongside them as key Austrian-Jewish collectors of Schiele’s work were the businessman and art critic Karl Mayländer (1872–1941), the scion of an art-collecting family Erich Lederer (1896–1985) [Figs. 8–10], the dentist Heinrich Rieger (1868–1942) [Fig. 11], and the merchant Arthur Stemmer (1880–1954) [Fig. 12].

LV Schiele Fig. 8 - Schiele, Sitzender Bub mit gefalteten Händen (recto) — Fig. 8 Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Sitzender Bub mit gefalteten Händen* (recto)*; Bildnisstudie Dr. Oskar Reichel mit erhobener linker Hand* (verso), 1910. Christie’s New York, 14 May 2022. Restituted to the heir of Karl Mayländer, 2016

LV Schiele Fig. 9 - Schiele, Portrait Erich Lederer — Fig. 9 Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Portrait of Erich Lederer*, 1912. Oil and gouache on canvas, 139 x 55 cm.
Kunstmuseum Basel, a gift from the wife of Erich Lederer-von Jacobs, in memory of her late husband.

LV Schiele Fig. 10 - Schiele, Erich Lederer, Drawing on the Floor — Fig. 10 Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Erich Lederer, Drawing on the Floor* (recto)*; Erich Lederer in Profile, Hand to Head* (verso), 1912. Christie's London, 6 February 2013

LV Schiele Fig. 11 - Schiele, Hafen von Triest — Fig. 11
Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Hafen von Triest*, 1907. Oil and pencil on cardboard. Christie’s London, 20 June 2006. Restituted by the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Johanneum, Graz to the heirs of Heinrich Rieger in 2006

'…bodies have their own light, which they consume during their lifetime; they burn; they are unlit’

Egon Schiele, letter to Dr. Hermann Engel, September 1911

LV Schiele Fig. 12 - Schiele, Sitzender weiblicher Akt mit grünen Stiefeln — Fig. 12 Egon Schiele (1890–1918), *Sitzender weiblicher Akt mit grünen Stiefeln (Torso),* 1917. Formerly in the Arthur Stemmer collection. Christie’s New York, 19 May 2026

Almost all of these admirers of Schiele’s art fled for their lives or were deported to their deaths after the Anschluss.

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LV Schiele Fig. 13 - Schiele, Portrait of the Art Dealer Guido Arnot

LV Schiele Fig. 14 - Letter from Schiele to Guido Arnot, incl. display plan for the exhibition, 17 Aug 1915, p 1

LV Schiele Fig. 15 - Letter from Schiele to Guido Arnot, incl. display plan for the exhibition, 17 Aug 1915, p 2

LV Schiele Fig. 16 - Letter from Schiele to Guido Arnot, incl. display plan for the exhibition, 17 Aug 1915, p 3

LV Schiele Fig. 17 - Letter from Schiele to Guido Arnot, incl. display plan for the exhibition, 17 Aug 1915, exh. display

LV Schiele Fig. 19 - Neue Galerie, entrance

LV Schiele Fig. 20 - Neue Galerie with the first posthumous exhibition entitled ‘Egon Schiele – Paintings and Drawings’

Before art collectors could encounter Schiele’s paintings and graphic works there, of course, had to be art dealers to represent and promote his extraordinary artistic output. Guido Arnot (né Abeles, 1868-1946) [Fig. 13] was Schiele’s first gallerist at Kärntner Ring 13 in the upmarket 1^st District. His father had founded Galerie Arnot in Vienna as far back as 1863. From 31^st December 1914 to 31^st January 1915, Arnot held the famous Kollektiv-Ausstellung Egon Schiele, Wien at his premises [Figs. 14-18] which helped to make Schiele’s name. Guido Arnot moved to London before the end of the 1920s. His younger brother and fellow art dealer Hugo Arnot (né Abeles, 1872–1940) followed in June 1939 and died there in 1940. Guido died in London six years later in 1946, and Hugo’s son Herbert (1907–1990) founded the Arnot Gallery in New York that same year.

Fig. 18 The poster for the Schiele exhibition at Galerie Arnot, Vienna, 1915. Digital image: Wien Museum

Otto Kallir (né Nirenstein, 1894–1978) was another celebrated Viennese Jewish art dealer whose great efforts in promoting Schiele’s work at his Neue Galerie, which he established in 1923 at Grünangergasse 1 [Fig. 19] also in the 1st District, helped to lay the foundations for the artist’s worldwide fame today. Kallir’s inaugural exhibition of Egon Schiele paintings, which opened in November 1923 [Fig. 20], was just the first of many that he devoted to Schiele, all of which were hugely instrumental in magnifying the artist’s posthumous reputation. Alongside exhibitions of Schiele’s work, Kallir showed Gerstl, Klimt, Kokoschka, Kubin, and many other Austrian and international modern artists from Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia and beyond.

Kallir organised more than 120 exhibitions before he was forced to flee Vienna following the Anschluss in 1938 [Fig. 21].

LV Schiele Fig. 21 - Otto Kallir with Vita Künstler in Vienna in 1938 — Fig. 21 Otto Kallir, Vita Künstler in Neue Galerie Vienna after World War II c.1949 summer. Photo: courtesy Kallir Research Institute, New York

Arnot and Kallir represent two different stories of Vienna: one an émigré long before the Anschluss of March 1938 and the other a refugee from the city very soon after it. As mentioned, Arnot had already moved to London by the end of the 1920s, while Kallir fled Vienna with his family for Switzerland in 1938, followed by Paris and then New York in 1939. In New York he opened a branch of the Galerie St. Etienne on E. 57th Street that he had founded in Paris only in 1938. Galerie St. Etienne has specialised in promoting the work of the Austrian modernists and expressionists, especially Schiele, ever since and it has become the world-leading centre for scholarship on the artist.

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Promoting Schiele’s Genius

‘Perhaps you could open the exhibition on Saturday or Monday until further notice – please keep the exhibition open for a very, very long time – (...). For your windows at street level, I’d like to make two large posters that can be as big as possible. Please do make sure to send invitations to all newspapers and magazines, as well as to everyone else who has always been invited – you can also give me a batch of cards.’

Egon Schiele to Guido Arnot, 17 August 1915.

Other Jewish art dealers who had known Schiele personally and professionally in Vienna, though perhaps not as pivotal as Arnot and Kallir, were Richard Lányi (né Löwy, 1884-1942) [Fig. 23] and Paul Wengraf (1894-1978) [Fig. 24].

LV Schiele Fig. 22 - Letter from Schiele to Lanyi, 22.2.1917 — Fig. 22
Letter from Egon Schiele to Richard Lányi, 22 February 1917.
Copyright Leopold Museum, Vienna

LV Schiele Fig. 23 - Richard Lányi outside his bookshop in Vienna — Fig. 23
Richard Lányi outside his bookshop in Vienna on Kärtner Strasse 44

LV Schiele Fig. 24 - Schiele, Portrait of the Art Dealer Paul Wengraf, 1917, D2091 — Fig. 24
Egon Schiele (1918–1890), *Portrait of the Art Dealer Paul Wengraf*, 1917. Pen and watercolour on paper

Lányi was a bookshop owner and art collector who published a portfolio of collotypes after 12 drawings by Egon Schiele in 1917 [Figs. 25, 26]; and later printed a further 34 pictures by Schiele as postcards, thus promoting his graphic work.

‘Dear Mr Lanyi, I confirm receipt of your letter of 19 February 1917.
You will be publishing the first portfolio.
I shall number [!] and sign every single copy.’

Egon Schiele, letter to Richard Lányi, 22 February 1917

LV Schiele Fig. 25 - After Egon Schiele, Zeichnungen, 1917 — Fig. 25
After Egon Schiele, Zeichnungen Egon Schiele / 12 Blätter in Originalgrösse, 1917.
This proof copy of Zeichnungen Egon Schiele is inscribed by the young artist to his wife Edith Schiele (née Harms) and signed with his monogram.

LV Schiele Fig. 26 - After Egon Schiele, Zeichnungen, 1917 — Fig. 26
After Egon Schiele, *Zeichnungen Egon Schiele / 12 Blätter in Originalgrösse*, 1917. Christie’s Online, 14 December 2023.
This proof copy of Zeichnungen Egon Schiele is inscribed by the young artist to his wife Edith Schiele (née Harms) and signed with his monogram

Wengraf was born into a Jewish family of antique dealers and got to know Schiele in 1917 through Lányi. He fled Vienna for London in 1938 and founded the Arcade Gallery in Mayfair in 1939.
As early as 1934, Lányi had been the subject of opprobrium in the viciously antisemitic tabloid newspaper Der Stürmer (The Stormer). After the Anschluss, he was again the target of state-sponsored attack — his business was shut down for several days by the Gestapo. He was deported to Auschwitz on 2 February 1942, where he was murdered after only three months’ incarceration in May 1942.

The decay of those sunflowers, the pulsing of life, of sexuality, in Schiele’s entwined nudes. Life and death, two universal themes so central to Schiele’s work, were reflected in the fates of his Austrian-Jewish patrons, collectors, and dealers particularly powerfully after the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938. Those works by Schiele that they once owned, displayed or sold stand in many ways as enduring, indelible testaments to their own lives, lives that were in some cases cut tragically short by the National Socialist regime.

REFERENCES

Tobias G. Natter, Die Welt von Klimt, Schiele und Kokoschka. Sammler und Mäzene. Köln, 2003.
Kallir Research Institute, New York. Egon Schiele. The complete works online. Kallir Research Institute_© _2020
Esther Selsdon, Jeanette Zwingerberger & Ashley Bassie, Schiele, New York, 2011, p. 138.

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