Figural Expressive Study

Sometime in the 1920s Helene von Taussig was living near Salzburg in a circle of women painters, and she had brought back from Paris the loud colour of the French Fauves. This study shows how hard she pushed it. A figure sits wrapped in a long blue cloak, head turned and eyes lowered, and nearly everything is built from broad strokes of blue, turquoise and green held in thick dark outlines. In several places she left the bare canvas showing through. The museum dates it only to the span between 1920 and 1930. The canvas has a second picture. On its back is a portrait of a woman resting her head in her hands. Both sides came to the Belvedere in 2013 as a loan from Felicitas Eltz, the artist's great-niece.