Krumau on the Vltava (The Small Town IV)

Krumau on the Vltava (The Small Town IV) of 1913 returns to Schiele's beloved Český Krumlov subject for the fourth time in his numbered series of townscape works. By 1913 Schiele had been expelled from Krumlov but continued to paint it from memory and from sketches made during his stays — the town had become an internal psychological landscape as much as an observed location. The Vltava River wraps around Krumlov on three sides, giving the medieval town its distinctive peninsular topography that Schiele captured in his characteristic aerial views. The Leopold Museum holds this canvas alongside many other Schiele townscapes, enabling direct comparison of how his formal approach to the subject evolved across the series. By the fourth version, the compositional formula is fully established — high viewpoint, no sky, interlocked building masses — and Schiele is working within and against his own conventions rather than discovering the subject anew.

The canvas shows Schiele's 1913 townscape technique at full command: buildings are rendered as flat colour blocks with dark outlining, the palette restricted to ochres, russets, and muted greens. The Vltava River appears as a light horizontal band anchoring the composition's lower edge.