Portrait of the Artist's Sister-in-Law Adele Harms, 1917

ABOUT THIS PAINTING

Egon Schiele’s Portrait of the Artist’s Sister-in-Law, Adele Harms (1917) is an artwork that seethes with quiet intensity. Adele – older sister of Schiele’s wife, Edith – sits rigidly, her body wound tight. Her hands knot, clasped in a way that suggests both restraint and control, as if she’s containing something within herself. Her eyes, fixed on the viewer, hold a mixture of defiance and weariness. She’s not inviting us in, nor is she shutting us out. Instead, she waits – poised, wary, unreadable.

Schiele’s hand is unmistakable here. His jagged lines carve out Adele’s angular frame, exaggerating the severity of her presence. The palette is restrained – earthy tones, dark fabric, a pale face against a barren background – yet nothing about Adele is passive. Her posture is defensive. Her expression is ambiguous, yet impossible to ignore. Unlike Schiele’s more sensual, distorted figures, Adele is rendered with a kind of psychological realism, her discomfort palpable, her presence undeniable.

In my novel, The Flames, which imagines the fraught relationships between the women who vied for Egon Schiele’s attention and posed provocatively for his artworks, Adele is a character subsumed with longing for her sister’s husband – a man she herself had hoped to marry. Her desire fuels delusions, and the consequences are violent for all involved. Artworks such as this support that hypothesis.

The story beneath the surface is a fraught one. Schiele’s marriage to Edith cast Adele into the shadows. Half a century later, she would die in obscurity, unmarked by history. But here, in this moment, Adele exists – dignified, distant, a woman who will not be erased. This is not simply a portrait; it is a reckoning with absence, with loss, with a life overlooked. – Sophie Haydock

Painted: 1917
Location: Vienna, Austria
Repository: The ALBERTINA Museum
Artist: Egon Schiele
Original Format: Oil paint on canvas