#pattern

The woman in the chair was a pianist who ran with a crowd of painters, writers and musicians. Apparently he painted her many times and the two stayed close friends for years, even after her marriage ended.

According to what I found, the blank ends of these prefab blocks got handed to artists as giant canvases — there was a whole programme of it in the East. Beyond that I couldn't dig up anything about this one in particular.

Her husband commissioned it — a banker, from what I've read — and it apparently took something like four years to finish. The Nazis took it off the family in 1941, and there was a long legal fight over it decades later before it ended up where it is now.

He belonged to a group in Vienna who'd walked out on the official art establishment and built their own place to exhibit in, from what I've read. This comes from the stretch afterwards when he was deep into gold and pattern, and doing big pictures about the stages of a life.

He'd walked out of the official Viennese art establishment years before this with a group who set up their own building to show in, which is roughly the world this belongs to. The reading you come across most often is that all the figures here are one girl dreaming herself into different lives — though as far as I can tell that's other people's guesswork, not anything he ever said.

This is said to be one of the last canvases he had on the go, and it usually gets listed as unfinished. Before he ever painted a cradle he'd spent years on decorative commissions — walls, friezes, panels for other people's buildings — which might be why bedding gets as much attention here as anybody's face.

From what I can find this was the only easel painting he ever managed to finish — he gave up on painting not long after and put everything into wallpaper, fabric and furniture instead. The woman modelling for it was Jane Burden, who he married the year after. There's a story that he wrote on the back that he couldn't paint her but he loved her; no idea whether that's true or just a good line people repeat.