Getty Buy: "Earliest Pregnant Self-Portrait"?

Elena Luksch-Makowsky, Self-Portrait of the Artist During Pregnancy, 1901

The Art Tribune reports that the Getty Museum has purchased a watercolor self-portrait of Vienna Secessionist artist Elena Luksch-Makowsky (1897-1967) from Colnaghi Elliott Master Drawings. The gallerists' write-up calls it "one of the earliest known self-portraits during full pregnancy, perhaps even the earliest." It predates Paula Modersohn-Becker's 1906 painting Self-Portrait of the Sixth Wedding Anniversary, not to mention the baby bump imagery of celebrity media. The Luksch-Makowsky portrait is executed in gouache and pencil on paper and measures 21-1/2 by 13-3/4 in.

Luksch-Makowsky's reputation has risen since two recent shows at Vienna's Belvedere Museum: 2019's "City of Women: Female Artists in Vienna 1900-1938," followed a year later by the single-artist "Elena Luksch-Makowsky: Silver Age and Secession." Russian-born, Luksch-Makowsky insisted that artist-husband Richard Luksch recognize her independence in a prenuptial agreement. Much of her work treats the ever-topical theme of juggling family with an art career.

Self-Portrait adds to fin-de-siècle Austrian drawings by Gustave Klimt and Emilie Mediz-Pelikan in the Getty collection.