With the opening of the Leopold Museum in Vienna in 2001, a major assemblage of Austrian modernist masterpieces, including the world's largest collection of works by Egon Schiele, becomes available to public view for the first time. This beautifully produced book is the catalogue of the Leopold Museum's holdings, originally the private collection of Rudolf and Elisabeth Leopold. Over 220 full-page illustrations present two centuries of Austrian paintings, drawings, and graphics as well as major objects of Austrian arts and crafts.

The book opens with a brief history of the collection by Rudolf Leopold. Then, moving chapter by chapter through the collection, the catalogue traces the history of Austrian art beginning with the nineteenth-century paintings and drawings of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, August von Pettenkofen, Anton Romako, Carl Schuch, and others; continuing with turn-of-the-century works by such artists as Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Josef Hoffmann and Kolo Moser; and proceeding through Austrian expressionism, represented by Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Richard Gerstl. The book also offers separate discussions of the Austrian arts and crafts movement, collectors and collecting, and Expressionism. An appendix provides concise biographies of the artists.