Death and Maiden

1915

Oil on canvas, 150 × 180 cm. Belvedere, Vienna

A man in a dark robe holds a woman who clings to him, the pair perched on a rumpled cloth in a barren landscape. The Belvedere identifies the man as the painter and the woman as Wally Neuzil.

His marriage to Edith Harms ended the relationship.
Neuzil later became a wartime nurse; scarlet fever killed her in 1917.
Look at the unsteady poses: neither figure seems firmly placed, as if they could slide apart.
A flat dark robe sits against the broken, chalky white of the cloth and her patterned, many-colored dress.
An old motif of death claiming a young woman can be read here as a private parting between two real people.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · PD-Art