Egon Schiele ranks with Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka among the most influential painters to emerge from the cultural ferment that characterized Vienna at the turn of the century. Yet despite the appreciation of his art, the real Egon Schiele has remained elusive. Like Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch precursors of Expressionism with whom he has much in common Egon Schiele has often been mired in the myth of the tortured artist. His imprisonment on morals charges and his premature death at the age of twenty-eight in 1918 have tended to dominate accounts of his life.