Description
Egon Schiele – Street Cart, 1914
This hand-painted Egon Schiele painting, Street Cart, is our copy in watercolour and gouache on paper of a watercolour from 1914. The original is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
What the sheet shows
The sheet shows a street vendor’s cart, its canvas awning stretched over a wooden frame and mottled in grey-green stains. A dark blue umbrella stands open beside it on a long pole, with trestle legs below and a single spoked wheel. Along the lower edge run small blocks of red, orange, blue and yellow — the goods for sale. The background is left as bare paper.
The original’s medium and format
The original is watercolour and gouache on paper — the museum records it as “Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on paper” — measuring 39.1 × 31.1 cm (width × height) (inv. 1984.433.303).
Where it is
The work is today in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which received it through the Scofield Thayer bequest (inv. 1984.433.303).
Our hand-painted copy
Our copy is hand-painted in watercolour and gouache on paper, the same medium as the original, and painted in the size you choose. We send you a photograph of the finished work for approval before it ships.
Frequently asked questions
What does Schiele’s Street Cart show?
A street vendor’s cart, its canvas awning stretched over a wooden frame and mottled with grey-green stains. Beside it a dark blue umbrella stands open on a long pole, above trestle legs and a single spoked wheel. Small blocks of red, orange, blue and yellow along the lower edge are the goods for sale, and the background is left as bare paper.
When did Schiele make Street Cart?
In 1914, the year the First World War broke out. That year his work was shown in Germany with the travelling Werkbund exhibition and in Rome, Brussels and Paris, and in the summer he began making drypoint etchings. In 1915, a few days after his wedding to Edith Harms, he was called up for military service.
What else did Schiele depict besides people?
Landscapes, trees and above all townscapes, many of them of Krumau (today Český Krumlov), his mother’s hometown in southern Bohemia. He often worked from sketches made on the spot and turned them into larger compositions in the studio later. In these works, as the Neue Galerie in New York puts it, trees and flowers take on the role of portrait subjects.
What technique did Schiele use for Street Cart?
Watercolour, gouache and graphite on paper, as the Metropolitan Museum records it: a pencil drawing combined with transparent watercolour and opaque gouache. The sheet is in landscape format, and the museum catalogues it among its drawings.
Where is Schiele’s Street Cart today?
In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, under inventory number 1984.433.303. It came with the 1982 bequest of Scofield Thayer, the American editor of the literary magazine The Dial. Thayer bought works by Klimt and Schiele while he lived in Vienna from 1921 to 1923.
