In Memory of Egon and Wally

 Egon Schiele, Portrait of Wally (1912)

 © Leopold Museum, Vienna

One of the most heartless lines ever written was written by the painter Egon Schiele in a note to a friend  in February 1915: 'I intend to get married advantageously. Not to Wally.'

And so it was that on June 17th of that year, despite opposition from her family, Schiele wed the socially superior and more acceptable figure of Edith Harms, rather than his young model, muse, and girlfriend, Wally, whom he had met in Vienna in 1911 when she was just seventeen, and who had inspired some of his most beautiful and erotically striking pictures. 

Apparently, Schiele was hoping to retain Wally as a mistress after his marriage to Edith - suggesting, for example, that they might go on holiday together once a year - but she was having none of this and, having been cruelly informed of his plan to walk down the aisle with another woman, she immediately abandoned him and decided to start her life anew, training as a nurse. Sadly, they never saw one another again; she dying of scarlet fever on Christmas day, 1917, and he succumbing to a flu pandemic the following year.

Walburga ('Wally') Neuzil was born in August 1894, in the small town of Tattendorf. She was the daughter of a labourer and a school teacher. After the family moved to the Austrian capital following the premature death of her mother, Wally became a model for Schiele's mentor, Gustav Klimt, before becoming fatefully involved with the younger artist, to whom she was clearly devoted. 

Thus when, for example, Schiele was thrown in jail in April 1912, for seducing a girl below the age of consent (a charge that was eventually thrown out of court - although he was found guilty of producing and exhibiting obscene works likely to corrupt minors), Wally stuck by him. Not only did she regularly visit her lover in prison, but she supplied him with painting materials and fresh fruit (Schiele noted in his diary that an orange, given to him by Wally, provided his only happiness during his 24 days in custody awaiting trial).  

 

Such loyalty makes me very fond of Wally. On the other hand, however, I'm rather disappointed in Schiele; who would have thought he'd have been such a little shit worried about marrying to his own advantage and content to social climb in this manner?

But then, as Nietzsche points out, there's nobody more corrupt and more conventional at heart than an artist!