Portrait of Herbert Rainer 1910

Egon Schiele made this drawing, Portrait of Herbert Rainer, with thin, wiry lines on a warm tan piece of paper. It has a kind of nervous energy, don't you think? I imagine Schiele, hunched over, intensely observing the boy, Rainer, his hand flying across the paper to capture every detail, every quirk of the young sitter’s expression. The lines feel tentative, like he’s searching for the right way to describe what he sees. And those hands! So fidgety and expressive, they tell a story all on their own. It’s all about the line here, isn’t it? How Schiele uses it to describe form, but also to convey emotion, tension, a sense of unease. Thinking about other painters like Matisse or even de Kooning, I'm reminded that line can be everything. The way it dances and weaves across the surface, creating a world of its own. It makes you wonder what Schiele would think of our paintings today. We’re all in conversation, you know, across time and space, inspiring each other, pushing the boundaries of what painting can be.