Description
House Wall on the River is a 1915 painting by Egon Schiele: a house front with small windows and brightly coloured laundry on a line rises straight out of dark river water. We paint it by hand in oils at the size you choose, and before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished work for approval.
| Title: | House Wall on the River |
| Other titles: | Hauswand am Fluss |
| Painter: | Egon Schiele (1890–1918) |
| Year: | 1915, signed and dated lower right “EGON SCHIELE 1915” |
| Original size: | 109.5 cm x 140 cm |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Style: | Expressionism |
| Location: | Leopold Museum, Vienna |
| Our reproduction: | hand-painted oil on canvas, 15 sizes from 40 x 29 cm to 210 x 150 cm, or a made-to-measure size |
House Wall on the River – Egon Schiele
What does the painting show?
The Austrian painter Egon Schiele (1890–1918) painted it in 1915. A single house front, seen head-on and close up, fills almost the whole surface and rises out of dark brown water with no bank in between. The walls are laid in patches of ochre, olive and brown, like old plaster. Along the top are three arched attic windows with small panes; below them runs a long band of windows, some with red frames. To the left and right, two lower wings carry shingled roofs. In the middle, in front of a pale white wall, a line of laundry hangs in white, orange, red and ochre, and further down a dark doorway opens just above the water. The river takes up the bottom of the canvas and repeats the windows and the door as blurred brown reflections. Lower right, on the wall above the water, a small square holds the signature and the date, EGON SCHIELE 1915.
Why do people love it?
Because it is quiet and full of life at the same time. There is nobody in it, and yet the laundry tells you at once that the house is lived in. The warm ochres and browns make the whole wall glow, and the few bright spots – the laundry, the red window frames – lead the eye across it. There are dozens of windows to look at, each one slightly different, and the water below gives the house weight and calm. The colours sit easily with wood, stone and white or warm-toned walls. It is a canvas painting that suits a living room as well as a study or a hallway.
Provenance
The painting was owned by the Böhler family (Heinrich Böhler of Vienna and St. Moritz, then Mabel Böhler of Lugano) before Rudolf Leopold acquired it in the 1950s; it is now at the Leopold Museum in Vienna.
Where does it sit among Schiele’s works?
It is a town view from 1915 with no figure in it at all. In our Egon Schiele selection it hangs beside works of a very different kind that you can order in the same way, painted by hand at your size – for example The Hermits, Trude Engel and Portrait of Wally Neuzil. The full selection is in the Egon Schiele gallery, and there is more on his life in our article about Egon Schiele.
How is our hand-painted version made?
A painter works the whole canvas in oils, stroke by stroke: a copy made by hand for your order, not a print. Like the original, ours is oil on canvas. The hardest parts here are the wall, which is built up in thin, translucent layers of brown and must not turn into a flat backdrop, and the laundry, which has to stay thick and bright as the one lively note of colour. When the work is finished we photograph it and send you the photograph for approval; only then does it ship. This work has not yet been photographed in our workshop, so for now this page shows no workshop photos of it.
Which size for which wall?
We offer this work in fifteen sizes, from 40 x 29 cm to 210 x 150 cm. For a hallway, a study or above a shelf, 40 x 29 cm, 50 x 35 cm or 60 x 45 cm is enough. Above a sofa, a sideboard or a bed, 100 x 70 cm or 120 x 90 cm fills the space well. For a large living-room wall or an open-plan room, choose 150 x 110 cm, 190 x 145 cm or our largest size, 210 x 150 cm. At the larger sizes, step back a few metres: that is where the windows, the laundry and the reflections come together into one house. A hand-painted painting hangs best with its centre at eye level, roughly 145–150 cm from the floor; above a sofa, 15–25 cm above the backrest.
Custom size, stretcher bar and frame
If none of our sizes suits your wall, we paint the work to your own measurement. If you choose YES under the Podokvir (stretcher bar) option, the canvas comes stretched on a wooden stretcher bar, ready to hang. Our 3D application is for choosing a frame only; the frame is chosen separately and need not be part of the order.
Delivery and guarantee
We paint to order and deliver to sixteen countries in the European Union, among them Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Germany and France; the United Kingdom and Ireland are not currently among them. Before dispatch we send you a photograph of the finished work to approve. Production time depends on the size and on the studio’s workload. Every order is covered by our Returns and Refund Policy.
Frequently asked questions
Where is the house in House Wall on the River?
In Český Krumlov (Krumau) in southern Bohemia, the birthplace of Schiele’s mother. According to the Leopold Museum, it is the facade of the former Church of Saint Judoc on the left bank of the Vltava, converted into a residential building in the late 18th century. Its extensions facing the river were once roofed with shingles, which Schiele kept; otherwise he took great liberties with composition and colour.
Why did Schiele paint Český Krumlov so often?
It was his mother’s hometown, and he knew it well from frequent visits, some of them lasting several months. In 1911 he moved there with Wally Neuzil, but the residents disapproved of their way of life and the couple had to leave. The town gave him motifs for many townscapes, House Wall on the River among them.
Why are there no people in House Wall on the River?
As the Leopold Museum notes, people never appear in Schiele’s townscapes. Here the closed windows catching the light and, above all, the thickly painted, colourful laundry take their place, telling of the lives of those who live behind the wall.
When did Schiele paint House Wall on the River?
In 1915; it is signed and dated lower right “EGON SCHIELE 1915”. That year Schiele married Edith Harms and was called up for military service. Its first owner, from 1915, was Heinrich Böhler, Schiele’s pupil and patron.
Where is House Wall on the River today?
In the Leopold Museum in Vienna, under inventory number 468. From Heinrich Böhler it passed to Mabel Böhler in Lugano in 1940 and to Rudolf Leopold in 1952; the Leopold Museum Private Foundation has held it since 1994.
Does it work as a gift?
Yes; if you are unsure which size to choose, there is a gift voucher.
