Fernand Khnopff Belgian, 1858-1921

Gustav Engelbrecht, Hamburg
J.B. Warner
Sale: Christie's, London, 12 December 1969, lot 105
The Piccadilly Gallery, London
James Astor, London (purchased from the above in July 1970)

London, The Piccadilly Gallery, Symbolists, 1970, no. 40, illustrated in the catalogue
Eastbourne, Towner Art Gallery, Symbolists, 1970
Paris, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Fernand Khnopff, 1979-80
Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique & Hamburg, Kunsthalle, Fernand Khnopff, 1980, no. 138, illustrated in the catalogue
Tokyo, Bunkamura Museum of Fine Arts; Himeji, Municipal Art Museum; Nagoya, Nagoya City Museum & Yamanashi, Prefectural Museum, Fernand Khnopff, 1990, no. 296, illustrated in the catalogue
Brussels, Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique; Salzburg, Museum der Moderne - Rupertinum & Boston, McMullen Museum of Art, Fernand Khnopff, 2004,  no. 25, illustrated in the catalogue

Robert Delevoy, Catherine de Croës & Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque, Fernand Khnopff, Catalogue de l'oeuvre, Brussels, 1987, p. 467, no. 463, illustrated
Michel Draguet, Khnopff, ou l'ambigu poétique, Brussels, 1995, pp. 291 & 293, no. 291, illustrated in colour

This condition report has been provided by Jane McAusland FIIC, Conservator and Restorer of Art on Paper, Nether Hall Barn, Old Newton, Nr Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14. C O N D I T I O N R E P O R T SOTHEBY'S - SYMBOLISM AND THE POETIC VISION - 14 NOVEMBER 2007 Lot 251 Fernand Khnopff Belgian, 1858-1921 FEMME MYSTERIEUSE Signed FERNAND / KHNOPFF l.l.; marked with the collector's stamp of Gustav Engelbrecht l.r. Pencil and coloured pencil on paper 28 x 17.2 cm Support This drawing on thick wove paper is attached at its corners to a mount for full display. The condition is good. Medium The delicate crayons are in excellent condition. Note: This work was viewed outside studio conditions. JANE McAUSLAND London office: Flat 3, 41 Lexington Street, Soho, London W1F 9AJ Fellow of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works Jane McAusland Limited trading as Jane McAusland FIIC
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
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FERNAND KHNOPFF

Khnopff came from an upper middle class Belgian family of lawyers. In 1875 he began to study law at the University of Brussels, but his true passion was literature. He avidly read Flaubert, Baudelaire and Leconte de Lisle, and his circle of friends included many young writers of the day, such as Emile Verhaeren, Max Waller, Iwan Gilkin and Georges Rodenbach. It was not long before he abandoned his law degree and began studying painting under Xavier Mellery. It was in Paris at the Exposition Universelle of 1878 that he discovered the works of Gustave Moreau, John Everett Millais and Edward Burne-Jones, which were to have a decisive influence on his own artistic output. Khnopff made his artistic debut in 1881, at the Brussels Salon held by the group L'Essor. In 1883 he was a founding member of the Belgian avant-garde group Les XX and later also of La Libre Esthetique. He exhibited at the annual Salons of the Rose + Croix in Paris, at the exhibitions of the Vienna Secession, and also started to exhibit regularly in England. The Pre-Raphaelite painters Hunt, Watts, Rossetti, Ford Maddox Brown and Burne-Jones became friends. In 1895 he became a correspondent for the English periodical The Studio, whose Studio-Talk-Brussels column he edited until 1914; he also regularly contributed to the journal of the Vienna Secession, Ver Sacrum.

For Khnopff, the experience of an ideal work of art was a quasi mystical experience, which allowed one to escape the world through imagination. Typically, his paintings are highly enigmatic and have multiple layers of meaning. To achieve this, Khnopff would deliberately isolate the motifs that interested him within a composition, and rearrange them like props on a stage. By choosing and ordering fragments of images on the basis of highly personal analogies, he eliminated every reference to real space and time. Similarly to Odilon Redon (see lots 257-259) Khnopff wanted his works to be contemplated and perceived intuitively rather than analysed and fully understood. It is for this reason that he has often been referred to as a painter of the invisible. For Khnopff, the image was merely the physical expression of the philosophical objective he had set himself, namely to seek out 'ideal beauty'.

Khnopff found the personification of ideal female beauty embodied by his sister, Marguerite, and he depicted her numerous times (see lots 251, 254 and 256). His depictions of her often heighten her androgynous features. Indeed, androgyny is central to Khnopff's work and representative of his belief that women embodied the duality and ambiguity of the world.    

Khnopff very much saw himself as the genius artist who has to renounce the dangers of sensuality in order to fulfil his spiritual and artistic calling. This idea was widespread in symbolist circles at the turn of the century and found expression in the many depictions of Oedipus and the Sphinx (see lot 254). This self-imposed isolation is also expressed by one of Khnopff's maxims, 'My soul is alone and nothing influences it. It is like glass enclosed in silence, completely devoted to its interior spectacle' (quoted by Verhaeren in his memoirs), and is behind the introspective, meditative aspects of many of his works, notably his depictions of unattainable femmes fatales or saintly virgins, and especially works such as Avec Verhaeren. Un Ange, whose stillness is reminiscent of Baudelaire's poem Beauty:

I am fair, O mortals! like a dream carved in stone,
And my breast where each finds death in turn
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
As eternal and silent as matter.

On a throne in the sky, a mysterious sphinx,
I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans;
I hate movement for it displaces lines,
And never do I weep and never do I laugh.

Poets, before my grandiose poses,
Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues,
Will consume their lives in austere study;

For I have, to enchant those submissive lovers,
Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal brightness!

(Charles Baudelaire, Flowers of Evil)

Executed circa 1909, the delicate colour harmonies of the present work illustrate the technical experimentation that continued to characterise Khnopff's work into maturity.

Mysticism and eroticism were two prevalent artistic themes at the turn of the century. Khnopff often portrayed women as sphinx-like creatures, mysterious figures harbouring untold secrets - at once vague and defined, aloof and sensual, fragile and powerful, soft and cruel.

According to Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque 'representations of women play a central role in Belgian Symbolism: the figure of Woman is seen as an embodiment of the duality and ambiguity of earthly existence. For Khnopff, Woman is by turns the angel, muse and friend who flies to Man's salvation. Yet she is also the depraved temptress, the femme fatale, the living symbol of Péladan's Le vice suprême. Angel or Demon, she is always alone, isolated from the world and unattainable. She speaks to no one and Love, the very symbol of communion, is denied her.' (Six symbolist works, Patrick Derom Gallery, Brussels, 2005, p. 23).

Commenting on Femme Mysterieuse, Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque writes: 'This striking, idiosyncratic work, obsesses and is very intense. Around 1909, Khnopff executed a number of works which depict women covered in jewellery.... The faces of these women are enigmatic, their eyes are closed, and nothing can trouble the meditation of these inaccessible princesses of dreams.' (Fernand Khnopff,  Tokyo, Hymenia, Nagoya and Yamanashi, 1990, p. 169).

Traditionally, in the 'language' of flowers, cyclamen were a symbol of diffidence. In the nineteenth century flowers given by a man to a woman had a clear meaning. While red roses for example spoke of passion and love, the message of cyclamen was 'Votre beauté me désespère' (your beauty makes me despair). The cyclamen in the present work are thus representative of the woman's unattainablility.

The stasis of Khnopff's female protagonists is a reflection of their introspection and trance-like state. He believed that an abandonment of consciousness was at the source of dreams, and was fascinated with sleep and hypnotic states. Hypnotizing by its own distant dreaminess, the face of Femme mysterieuse is idealized and impenetrable, her closed eyes creating yet another barrier to deciphering her secret.