Kneeling Girl in Orange-Red Dress

Egon Schiele was born in 1890 in Tulln, Lower Austria. The Austrian painter was one of the most important figures of Viennese Modernism. His works are exhibited in museums around the world - Vienna's Leopold Museum in the Museumsquartier has the most extensive collection of his works. Schiele's works reach maximum value at auctions. In the autumn of 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic that claimed more than 20,000,000 lives in Europe reached Vienna. Schiele's wife Edith, who was six months pregnant, succumbed to the disease on 28 October. Schiele died only three days after his wife. He was 28 years old. During the three days between their deaths, Schiele drew a few sketches of Edith; these were his last works. But the girl on the drawning is not Edith. Nor it's Wally, who lived with Schiele in Vienna before his marriage and served as a model for some of his most striking paintings. But one thing seems to be clear - Schiele seems to have had a thing for orange.