Egon Schiele’s landscape paintings from the early years of the First World War were innovative and exciting; his figurative work, which was even more radical, I find more of a challenge. Many of those works from 1915 centre on his personal relationships.

It appears that, when he married Edith Harms, Schiele had expected to maintain his relationship with Wally (Walburga Neuzil), with whom he had lived for four years. When he tried to explain this to Wally, she – perhaps not unsurprisingly – abandoned him immediately, and they apparently never met again.

Egon Schiele (1890–1918), Death and the Maiden (1915), oil on canvas, 150 x 180 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna, Austria. Wikimedia Commons.

Schiele expressed this in his major painting of Death and the Maiden (1915), which was exhibited the following year in Berlin. The young woman is based on his earlier paintings of Wally, and the man is…