Description
Egon Schiele – Portrait of Johann Harms, 1916
The hand-painted Egon Schiele painting Portrait of Johann Harms is an oil reproduction of a work from 1916. The original is held by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Who is shown
Johann Harms was the painter’s father-in-law, the father of Edith Schiele. When the work was made he was a little over seventy and living with the Schieles in Vienna. Schiele painted him without flattery, but with evident affection.
An old man on a chair
Harms sits at an angle on a plain wooden chair whose back and legs Schiele leaves bare and angular. He rests his head on his right hand, the elbow on the arm of the chair. His left hand hangs open over his knee. The pose is one of tiredness, not of posing.
The grey coat
The figure is taken up by a wide pale grey coat, painted in large planes with thin, dry strokes. It is this coat that carries the whole composition: beneath it the body is barely visible, only its weight.
The brown ground
The background is a deep, mottled brown, with no wall and no floor. Figure and chair float in it, which takes the old man’s place away from him and leaves him only his time.
Technique and format of the original
The original is painted in oil on canvas, measuring 140 × 110.5 cm (inv. 69.1884), and hangs today in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
Our hand-painted oil reproduction
Our painter works the reproduction by hand in oil on canvas, in the size you choose. Before delivery you receive a photograph of the painting for approval.
