Egon Schiele’s Self-Portrait with Peacock Waistcoat

What self-confidence looks like

What self-confidence looks like

What self-confidence looks like

Rarely has a young artist painted himself with such an air of self-assurance. Egon Schiele was twenty years old and had moved into a house in Neulengbach, intending to stay there for good. The artist was successful and able to show his works at international exhibitions, but for him that was only the beginning. He was aiming for the stars.

Before Schiele became a super star, he created a self-portrait of almost boundless idealization. The angle of vision already leads the viewer to look upwards towards artist, whose pose exudes fashionable elegance, his head framed in a manner reminiscent of figures of a saints. The Peacock Waistcoat gives a name to the vanity of the pose. This magnificent self-portrait was soon followed by the sobering experience of the “Neulengbach affair.” Now, the artist was no longer in the vanguard of society, but in prison and pushed to its fringes. 

Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait with Peacock Waistcoat, 1911
© 
Ernst Ploil, Wien

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