Artist of the day: Fernand Khnopff

Showing posts with label Fernand Khnopff. Show all posts

Monday, September 29, 2025

Artist of the Day, September 29, 2025 : Fernand Khnopff, a Belgian painter (#2378)

Fernand Edmond Jean Marie Khnopff (1858 – 1921) was a Belgian symbolist painter. He was born to a wealthy family that was part of the high bourgeoisie for generations. Khnopff's ancestors had lived in the Vossenhoek area of Grembergen Flanders since the early 17th century but were of Austrian and Portuguese descent. Most male members of his family had been lawyers or judges, and young Fernand was destined for a juridical career. In his early childhood, he lived in Bruges where his father was appointed Substitut Du Procureur Du Roi. His childhood memories of the medieval city of Bruges would play a significant role in his later work. In 1864, the family moved to Brussels. In his childhood Khnopff spent part of his summer holidays in the hamlet of Tillet not so far from Bastogne in the Luxemburg province where his maternal grandparents owned an estate.

To please his parents, he went to law school at the Free University of Brussels when he was 18 years old. During this period, he developed a passion for literature, discovering the works of Baudelaire, Flaubert, Leconte de Lisle and other mostly French authors.

Khnopff left University due to a lack of interest in his law studies and began to frequent the studio of Xavier Mellery, who made him familiar with the art of painting. On 25 October 1876, he enrolled for the Cours De Dessin Après Nature at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. At the Académie, his most famous fellow student was James Ensor, whom he disliked from the start. Between 1877 and 1880, Khnopff made several trips to Paris where he discovered the work of Delacroix, Ingres, Moreau and Stevens.

In 1881, he presented his works to the public for the first time at the "Salon de l'Essor" in Brussels. The critics' appraisal of his work is very harsh, with the exception of Emile Verhaeren who wrote a commending review. Verhaeren would remain a lifelong supporter and would write the first monograph on the painter. In 1883, Khnopff was one of the founding members of the group Le Groupe des XX. Khnopff exhibited regularly at the annual "Salon" organised by Les XX. In 1885, he met the French writer Joséphin Péladan the future grandmaster of the Rosicrucian "Ordre de la Rose + Croix". Péladan asked Khnopff to design the cover for his new novel Le Vice suprême.

In 1889, Khnopff laid his first contacts with England, where he would stay and exhibit regularly in the future. British artists such as Hunt, Watts, Rossetti, Brown and Burne-Jones would become friends. From 1895 Khnopff worked as a correspondent for the British art journal The Studio. Until the outbreak of World War I in 1914 Khnopff would be responsible for the rubric "Studio-Talks-Brussels" in which he reported about the artistic evolutions in Belgium and continental Europe. In March 1898 Khnopff presented a selection of 21 works on the first exhibition of the Vienna Secession. In Vienna his work was received with massive admiration. The works he presented at the Secession would form a major influence on the oeuvre of Gustav Klimt.

From 1900 onwards, Khnopff was engaged in the design of his new home and studio in Brussels. The house was inspired by the Vienna Secession and more in particular by the architecture of Joseph Maria Olbrich. To the sober architecture and decoration Khnopff added a highly symbolic, spatial and decorative concept that turned his home into a "Temple of the self". The house functioned as a shrine in which the genius of the painter could flourish. His motto "On a que soi" (One has but oneself) was inscribed above the entrance door, in and his studio he painted in the middle of golden circle inscribed on the white mosaic floor.

Although not a very open man and a rather secluded personality, he already achieved cult status during his life. Acknowledged and accepted, he received the Order of Leopold. His sister, Marguerite, was one of his favorite subjects. His most famous painting is probably Caress of the Sphinx ("L'Art ou Des Caresses"). His art often portrayed a recurring theme found in symbolist art: the dualistic vision of woman as either 'femme fatale' or angelic woman.
© 2025. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Fernand Khnopff or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Fernand Khnopff

I lock my door upon myself, c. 1881

Listening to Schumann, c. 1883

Portrait of Jeanne Kéfer, c. 1885

After Joséphin Péladan, The Supreme Vice, c. 1885

Portrait of Marguerite Khnopff, c. 1887

Portrait of Marie Monnom, c. 1887

Pallentes Radere Mores, c. 1888

Portrait of Madeleine Mabille, c. 1888

Memories, c. 1889

My Heart Cries for the Past, c. 1889

Portrait of Yvonne Seys, c. 1890

Silence, c. 1890

Étude de femme, c. 1891

Who Shall Deliver Me? c. 1891

Distrust, c. 1893

Les Enfants De Monsieur Neve, c. 1893

Stéphane Mallarmé’s Poetry (Listening to Flowers), c. 1895

Portrait of Mrs Botte, c. 1896

The Sleeping Medusa, c. 1896

The Sphinx or The Caress, c. 1896

Futur or A young English woman, c. 1898

Incens, c. 1898

Standing Woman, c. 1898

The Blood of Medusa, c. 1898

Bruges. A Church, c. 1904

The Bells, c. 1905

Paganism, c. 1910

The cigarette, c. 1912

Mary von Stuck, c. 1916

Posthumous portrait of Marguerite Landuyt

Still water

Monday, September 4, 2023

Artist of the Day, September 4, 2023: Fernand Khnopff, a Belgian symbolist painter, draftsman, photographer, sculptor, and writer. (#1896)

Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), was a Belgian painter, draftsman, photographer, sculptor, and writer associated with Symbolism and known best for his paintings that blend precise realism with an ethereal dreamlike atmosphere.

Khnopff came from an affluent family and was one of three siblings. When he was a child, his family lived for a time in the medieval Belgian city of Brugge, a place that would appear in many of his works later in life. Otherwise he was raised in Brussels and spent summers in the country in Fosset, Belgium, another place that he would later paint. In 1875 he set out to study law at the Free University of Brussels, but within a year he left to study art and literature at that city’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts. There he studied painting with Xavier Mellery. Throughout his years at the academy, Khnopff spent his summers in Paris to broaden his studies in the arts, and at the 1878 Exposition Universelle (world’s fair) he discovered works by Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones and by Symbolist Gustave Moreau, artists who would have a major impact on the direction of his painting career. He began exhibiting (mostly landscapes) in 1881 with the Belgian exhibition society called L’Essor, and by 1882 he was showing his own Symbolist works, many of which had subjects that were inspired by literature, especially by the writings of Gustave Flaubert. He soon found the support of poet Émile Verhaeren, who went on to connect Khnopff to the writers and poets of La Jeune Belgique, Brussels’s avant-garde literary review that led to a movement of the same name.

In 1883 Khnopff became a founding member of the Belgian avant-garde artists’ group Les Vingt, which at its founding included 19 other artists, James Ensor among them. Khnopff created notable works such as Listening to Schumann (1883), After Joséphin Péladan: The Supreme Vice (c. 1884), and In Fosset. An Evening (1886).

By the time Les Vingt dissolved in 1893, Khnopff’s career had taken off. While holding a firm position within the avant-garde circles of Brussels, he also became known as a portraitist of the city’s elite. His best-known portraits from that period include Portrait of Jeanne Kéfer (1885), Portrait of Marie Monnom (1887), Portrait of Jeanne de Bauer (1890), Portrait of the Children of Louis Nève (1893), and two portraits of his sister, Marguerite (1887 and 1896). Khnopff used his sister as a model repeatedly, often working from his photographs of her. Two works from 1891—Who Shall Deliver Me? (Christina Georgina Rossetti) and I Lock My Door upon Myself—point to Khnopff’s interest in poetry, in this case that of British poet Christina Rossetti. In 1896 he painted The Caresses (The Sphinx), his best-known work. The painting’s subject is an interpretation of Moreau’s Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864) and features a hybrid human-leopard nestled next to an androgynous Oedipus.

Between 1900 and 1902 Khnopff designed a lavish house and studio for himself at 41 rue des Courses in Brussels. During the decade beginning in 1903, he collaborated regularly with Brussels opera house Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, designing costumes, scenery, and sets for many productions. He also decorated interiors for landmark buildings in Brussels: Stoclet House and the Hôtel de Ville, Saint-Gilles. In his paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures of the 1900s, he continued to focus on mythological subjects and themes of introspection, memory, temptation, and mystery. Reflecting an ongoing interest in dreams and sleep, he turned to the Greek god of sleep Hypnos numerous times as a subject in his paintings and sculptures. Through the early 1910s he exhibited widely throughout Europe to great acclaim. Khnopff stayed in Brussels during World War I (1914–18), and, though his health and eyesight were declining, he taught painting classes, wrote on art and artists, and continued to create his own works.

© 2023. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Fernand Khnopff or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only