Mother and Daughter, Egon Schiele (1913)
Schiele is an unrivaled master of graphic art - Rudolf Leopold once noted that one would have to go back to Rembrandt and Dürer to find lines of comparable certainty and intensity.
This 1913 composition of a mother and daughter exemplifies this mastery. Leopold described it as a tension-filled yet harmonious composition: the diagonal of the girl's elongated body is balanced by her straight-hanging ponytail and a counterdiagonal running along both figures' arms. The scarlet of the mother's clothing contrasts strikingly with the girl's pale skin, softened with red and grey tones, as both share the same blonde hair.
