Sorrow
1914
Medium
Drypoint
Dimensions
Plate: 18 7/8 × 12 5/8 in. (47.9 × 32.1 cm) Sheet: 20 3/4 × 15 3/4 in. (52.7 × 40 cm) Frame: 23 × 17 × 1 1/2 in. (58.4 × 43.2 × 3.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Bequest of Scofield Thayer, 1982
Accession Number
1984.1203.198.4
Tags
Art Historical Context
Egon Schiele's *Sorrow* (1914), a poignant drypoint print, captures the raw emotional intensity for which the Austrian Expressionist is renowned. Created on the eve of World War I, work exemplifies Schiele's signature style: elongated, contorted human figures that convey profound psychological turmoil. The central figure, likely a woman hunched in despair, embodies the tags of "Sadness" and "Human Figures," with Schiele's jagged, expressive lines evoking isolation and anguish amid Europe's gathering storm. Drypoint, a direct intaglio technique where the artist scratches into the metal plate w...
About the Artist
Egon Schiele · 1890–1918
Egon Schiele (1890-1918) stands as one of the most provocative and psychologically penetrating artists of early twentieth-century European modernism. Born in Tulln an der Donau, Austria-Hungary, Schiele's brief but intensely productive life ended tragically at age twenty-eight when he and his pregnant wife Edith succumbed to the Spanish flu pandemic, mere days apart. Despite his truncated career, ...