Portrait of the Artist's Wife Seated, Holding Her Right Leg

Edith Harms, a well-educated, middle-class woman who married Schiele in 1915, frequently posed for him until they both died in an epidemic of Spanish flu in October 1918. This portrait shows the classicizing direction Schiele’s art was taking in the last years of his career, away from the highly provocative poses and convulsive gestures of his earlier work. The fluid, sensitive line and subdued palette impart a softer mood and express the artist’s feelings of sympathy, even tenderness, toward the sitter.