My time appears to have been apt - I read this in a single day at the start of 2021, with the latest flu pandemic raging all around us, and the number of dead from the virus approaching one and a half million globally; and here I read, at the conclusion of this fine book, that first Klimt, then Schiele's young, pregnant wife, and then finally Egon Schiele himself, all succumbed to the flu pandemic that raged even more fiercely a hundred years ago. A warning if ever one was needed.

This superb biography covers not only the life of the artist Egon Schiele, but also the art circle he was a part of in Vienna between the start of the twentieth century and his death just after the Great War. Schiele's art continues to fascinate, but as a person he must have been extremely hard work. Is that at all surprising? Perhaps not - Schiele provides another lesson, in case one were needed, that we ought to dissociate the artist from the art. ( )