Town among Greenery (The Old City III)

'Town among Greenery (The Old City III)' from 1917 belongs to Schiele's mature series of townscape paintings, in which he depicted the small Austrian towns of Krumau (Český Krumlov, his mother's birthplace) and Stein an der Donau with the same psychological intensity he brought to the human figure. By 1917 Schiele had served in the war and was stationed near Vienna; his output had shifted somewhat, reflecting both his maturing command of oil paint and an increased engagement with landscape as subject. The old town is presented from an elevated viewpoint, its rooftops compressed into an almost airless patchwork of tile, wall, and window. There are no inhabitants visible — the town is inhabited yet evacuated of human life, the buildings themselves becoming a kind of collective body. This depopulation is characteristic of Schiele's town paintings, in which architecture takes on the psychological charge he assigned to portraits: the houses look back, crooked and asymmetrical, as if registering their own anxiety. The series was significant for demonstrating that Schiele's Expressionist vision was not limited to the human figure but extended to the built environment, treating the vernacular architecture of the Habsburg periphery as a subject of equal psychological depth. The Neue Galerie in Graz holds significant works from this period of his production.

Oil on canvas with Schiele's mature handling, characterised by dense surface building and a warm-cool tension between terracotta roof tones and cooler greys and greens of the surrounding vegetation. The elevated viewpoint flattens spatial recession, stacking forms in a manner that owes more to medieval manuscript illumination than conventional perspective.