The orange was the only light 1912

Egon Schiele made this drawing with watercolor and pencil. It's all tentative marks and unsure outlines, as if feeling around for form, with the occasional smudge. You can see that he is working out the composition as he goes along. I really like the way that solid colors, like the brown of the shoes and the titular orange, sit alongside washes of grey and blue. These washes make the dogs feel heavy, and somehow sad. It is as if the picture is enacting the emotional and physical process of sinking into the bed. The orange is a bright spot of hope, or perhaps just an attempt to distract from the inevitable. For me, the drawing has a lot in common with the late work of Phillip Guston. It has that similar interest in everyday objects, a loose style, and a feeling of melancholy. There's no fixed meaning here, just a proposition about what art, and life, might be.