The Artist’s Muse
‘The author tells an evocative story that is both illuminating and engrossing at the same time.’ Allie Burns, author of The Lido Girls‘Lush and evocative.’Rosemary Smith‘The writing elevates this beyond many historical novels.’ Joseph MorganVienna 1907Wally Neuzil must find a way to feed her family. Having failed in many vocations, Wally has one last shot: esteemed artist Gustav Klimt needs a muse, and Wally could be the girl he’s been waiting for. But Wally soon discovers that there is much more to her role than just sitting looking pretty. And while she had hoped to establish herself as an emerging lady, the upper classes see her as no more than a prostitute.With her society dreams dashed Wally finds herself at rock bottom. So when young artist, Egon Schiele, shows her how different life can be Wally grabs hold of the new start she’s been desperately seeking. As a passionate love affair ensues will he be the making of her or her undoing?Praise for The Artist’s Muse‘Richly entertaining, wry and funny, and at the same time dark, thoughtful and allusive, I shall look forward to reading this one again, and any more that come from this writer.’ Kate Jackson‘A richly layered read, that delivers on many levels.’ Joseph Morgan‘Postle has taken me into a world full of characters that jump off the page with life, who inhabit a Vienna oozing with culture and modernity yet bursting at the seams at the height of empire and all the inequalities that go with it.’ Rebecca Barton‘This novel evokes a time and a place with such power. Wally Neuzil , so brave, yet so tragic, speaks with a voice to break your heart.’ Pam Dennis
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Vienna 1907
Wally Neuzil must find a way to feed her family. Having failed in many vocations, Wally has one last shot: esteemed artist Gustav Klimt needs a muse, and Wally could be the girl he’s been waiting for. But Wally soon discovers that there is much more to her role than just sitting looking pretty. And while she had hoped to establish herself as an emerging lady, the upper classes see her as no more than a prostitute.
With her society dreams dashed Wally finds herself at rock bottom. So when young artist, Egon Schiele, shows her how different life can be Wally grabs hold of the new start she’s been desperately seeking. As a passionate love affair ensues will he be the making of her or her undoing?
The Artist’s Muse
Kerry Postle
ONE PLACE. MANY STORIES
Contents
Endpages
KERRY POSTLE
left King’s College London with a distinction in her MA in French Literature. She’s written articles for newspapers and magazines, and has worked as a teacher of Art, French, German, Spanish, and English. She blogs on art and literature.
She lives in Bristol with her husband. They have three grown-up sons.
Kerry is currently working on her second novel set in Franco’s Spain.
Follow her on twitter @kerry_postle
For their unwavering support, Simon, Joe, Tom and Harry. For her unfailing belief in me, my mother.
For her time, patience, and curbing of my predilection for ribald double-entendres, Kate.
For their support and expertise, Hannah Smith and Helena Newton at HQ Digital.
I’m indebted to the following works: Jane Kallir’s Life and Works of Egon Schiele for dates and biographical details, Arthur Rimbaud’s poem ‘The Infernal Bridegroom’ from Une Saison en Enfer 1873 for the light it sheds on the nature of Wally and Egon’s relationship, Otto Weininger’s Geschlecht und Charakter 1903 for its insight into the misogyny of the time, and Adelheid Popp’s autobiographical Die Jugendgeschichte einer Arbeiterin 1909 for exposing the hardships faced by working class women at the turn of the century. As for Karl Kraus’s formula for a woman’s soul, I stumbled across it in Edward Timms’ Karl Kraus, Apocalyptic Satirist:Culture and Catastrophe in Habsburg Vienna.
However, I would never have started this novel if I hadn’t visited the Leopold Museum’s stimulating ‘WALLY NEUZIL. Her Life with Egon Schiele’ in 2015. This exhibition posed more questions than it answered. The Artist’s Muse is my response.
Although inspired by a true story the facts narrated and the characters represented in this novel are fictitious.
For Simon, Joe, Tom and Harry
‘woman is soulless and possesses neither ego nor individuality, personality nor freedom, character nor will.’
Otto Weininger, Sex and Character
Vienna, 1903
Modelling. The first time I did it, I didn’t like it. But Hilde told me to look as if I did. Or, failing that, to do as I was bid. I was only a child yet the future of my family – now living in Vienna, due to circumstances that I will reveal to you in due course – would depend on how well I got on in Gustav Klimt’s studio one gloomy Tuesday afternoon in November 1907. And Hilde, already successfully established as one of Klimt’s favourites, knew how much I needed – my family needed – this job.
Monday 4th February 1907
We had arrived in Vienna, city of hope, some nine months before that fateful afternoon in the studio, yet I remember it vividly even now. It was a brutally beautiful February day when we made the journey into the big city. As we set off, we must have made a strange sight. Katya was ten, Frieda eight, and Olga only seven, while I – the oldest and biggest of us – was twelve.
I, and even Katya, looked like giants, our young girls’ bodies bursting out of what we had on, exposing uncovered skin at wrist and ankle to the harsh cold of an Austrian winter’s day, while Frieda and Olga, wearing big-sister cast-offs, swept the floor with their hems. Our shoes, squashed-toe small or hand-me-down loose. But we dared not complain for fear of upsetting our mother whose life had now become a veil of tears, the tangible evidence of which she wore with the pride of the recently bereaved. It was hard to lift it up to see what she’d been like before.
Yet I for one was pleased to be going on this adventure. I had never been on a train before and the second the doors slammed shut, the whistle blew, and the engine started to hiss and puff its way out of the station, I was hypnotized. As I looked through the frost-framed windows, so the train took me on a mesmerizing trip past ice swords hanging from snow-tipped trees, single magpies frozen on walls, field upon field of virgin-white snow increasingly disturbed by man the closer we got to the city – and then there was bustle.
