Charlotte Mullins comments on Four Trees
GON SCHIELE is best known for his brutal, angular portraits. He developed his distinctive linear style as he exhibited alongside Gustav Klimt at the Vienna Secession in Austria in the 1900s. Schiele painted the circle of critics, was completed in 1917, the year before he died. A quartet of young trees grows on a rising ridge of grassland, the trees’ leaves broad like the hand-spans of horse chestnuts. They are silhouetted against a lurid red sun that colours the sky. Low-lying clouds in flat striated bands stretch horizontally across the canvas, countering the depth suggested by the distant blue mountains.
