by Sophie Haydock
Published by Doubleday
Anyone who’s ever visited art galleries in Vienna will have “met” Egon Schiele (1890-1918) and been stopped dead in their tracks by the visceral, raw sexuality and truth of his paintings and drawings.
So who were the women who inspired and modelled for him and enabled the creation of those extraordinary images? And “modelling” in this case almost always means highly explicit nudity. Enter Sophie Haydock’s 2022 novel The Flames which explores the interwoven stories of Schiele’s mistress/muse, Vally, his sister Gertrude, and Adele and Edith Harms. The latter was Frau Schiele until the couple died of Spanish Flu within days of each other.
Haydock’s version of the Harms sisters has Adele passionately in love with Schiele and embittered by his marrying her sister. A framing device presents her as an elderly woman at a 1960s Schiele exhibition trying to place her remorse. Haydock’s Edith loves Egon dearly but, unlike Adele, is a reluctant model.
Walburga Neuzil, whose name Haydock abbreviates to Vally, had also modelled for Klimt, whose protégé Schiele was. As a couple they lived together for several years and she saw him through arrest for indecency and brief imprisonment. Haydock’s Vally certainly isn’t prepared to let him have his cake and eat it once he marries so she enlists as a nurse in the war where she doesn’t, sadly, last long.
And as for Gertrude, history suggests that there may have been incest – or incestuous inclinations – between her and her older brother. It is well documented that their father once found them in a locked room and that he destroyed some of Egon’s art.
Of course, as you read this novel you want to see the paintings and drawings, an astonishing number of which have survived. Schiele was only 28 when he died. What on earth might he have achieved, had he lived into middle and old age?
Haydock includes a few small illustrations in the novel and you can get a glimpse of many of them simply by Googling. But The Flames will probably prompt you to book a trip to the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Cardinal and Nun (Caress), painted in 1912 is one of the most arresting paintings I’ve ever seen.
Review by Susan Elkin