Fernand Khnopff

Marguerite Freson-Khnopff, Liège
Thibaut de Maisières, Seneffe
Paul Haesaerts, Brussels
Marcel Mabille, Rhode-St.-Genèse

Robert L. Delevoy, Catherine de Croës & Gisele Ollinger-Zinque, Fernand Khnopff, Brussels, 1987, p. 326, no. 360, catalogued & illustrated

This condition report has been provided by Jane McAusland FIIC, Nether Hall Barn, Old Newton, Suffolk IP14 4PP Support Khnopff has used a sheet of blue/green paper of the laid variety and the sheet is attached at the top to the back of an overlay mount with two hinges. There is slight fading to the sheet. Otherwise the condition is good. Medium The medium is in a good condition. Note: This work was viewed outside studio conditions.
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Executed circa 1900, 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. 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. 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.

In the early 1890s Khnopff established a characteristic manner of depicting women, focusing on the face, cropped at the top and sides by a virtual or illusionistic frame of some sort. These cut-offs focus the viewer exclusively on the facial features, suggesting a mask and thus a reality behind surface appearance. This emphasis on the face can be traced back to his fascination with a Hellenistic head of Hypnos in the British Museum, London. He sculpted several versions of it and also used it as a model for other works. Khnopff's interest in the face, the mask and in sculpture culminated in a number of three-dimensional works, the first of which was Mask of a Young Englishwoman (polychromed plaster, 1891; Musée d'Art Moderne, Brussels).

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 Etude de Femme is idealized and impenetrable, her averted gaze creating yet another barrier to deciphering her secret.