Digital Editions
Newsletters
Subscribe
Digital Editions
Newsletters
Art market
Museums & heritage
Exhibitions
Books
Podcasts
Columns
Technology
Adventures with Van Gogh
Art market
Museums & heritage
Exhibitions
Books
Podcasts
Columns
Technology
Adventures with Van Gogh
Art market
news

Schiele’s landmark Danaë comes to auction at Sotheby’s

The mythological work is the artist’s first large-scale figural painting auctioned since 2001

By Dan Duray
24 April 2017
Share

Sotheby’s will offer an early figural painting by Egon Schiele, Danaë (1909), in its Impressionist & Modern Art evening sale in New York on 16 May. Dubbed by the house as the artist’s “first major oil painting of a female nude", the work, painted when he was just 19, is estimated to sell for between $30m and $40m.

Simon Shaw, the worldwide co-head of the Impressionist and Modern Art department at Sotheby’s, said in the house’s news release: "Danaë makes a bold and compelling statement, introducing [Schiele’s] iconic aesthetic: the flattened pictorial space, the angular line, the radical cropping and stippled flesh rendered in pinks and greens.”

Though Schiele died at 28 in 1918, he was a prolific producer of works on paper that mingle the sexual and the existential. Danaë is his first large-scale figural painting to come to auction since 2001. Reminiscent of Schiele’s mentor, Gustav Klimt, who also painted the mythical subject, Danaë was shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2013 alongside a nude by Klimt, both on loan from the collection of the British billionaire Joe Lewis. The work will tour to Hong Kong this week, going on view 27 April.

Back in 2011, Sotheby’s set the standing Schiele auction record with an oil from 1914, when the landscape Häuser mit bunter Wäsche (Vorstadt II) (House with colourful laundry, Suburban II), sold for $39.8m with premium. However, the artist’s canvases have their detractors. "Of the approximately 125 items on view," wrote the critic Ken Johnson of a 2014 Schiele show at the Neue Galerie, New York, "only 11 are oil paintings, which is a good thing… Schiele’s paintings are overworked, dark and turgid. His drawings are nimble and nuanced."

Art market
Share
Subscribe to The Art Newspaper’s digital newsletter for your daily digest of essential news, views and analysis from the international art world delivered directly to your inbox.
Newsletter sign-up
Information
About
Contact
Cookie policy
Data protection
Privacy policy
Frequently Asked Questions
Subscription T&Cs
Terms and conditions
Advertise
Sister Papers
Sponsorship policy
Follow us
Instagram
Bluesky
LinkedIn
Facebook
TikTok
YouTube
© The Art Newspaper

Related content

Art marketnews
25 April 2023

Rare Gustav Klimt lake landscape to make auction debut in New York

The painting is estimated to sell for around $45m next month at Sotheby's

Carlie Porterfield
Auctionsnews
10 February 2017

In bloom: Klimt’s flower garden to lead Sotheby’s London spring sales

The vibrantly painted landscape is expected to make more than $45m

By Dan Duray
Art marketnews
20 April 2023

Battle of the Basquiats: Christie’s and Sotheby’s both have big, eight-figure paintings lined up for marquee spring sales

'El Gran Espectaculo (The Nile)' and 'Now’s the Time' are estimated to sell for $45m at Christie’s and $30m at Sotheby’s, respectively

Carlie Porterfield