Fernand Khnopff

Ethel Strickland, the sitter
Marguerite Freson-Khnopff, Liège (sister of the artist)
Thibaut de Maisières family, Seneffe
Galerie Patrick Derom, Brussels
Purchased from the above by the present owner in 1993

Brussels, Musée d’Art Moderne, 5^ème Salon de L’Estampe, 1911, no. 149 (lent by 'Mme S', probably the sitter)
Paris, Musées des arts décoratifs; Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique; Hamburg, Kunsthalle; Fernand Khnopff 1858-1921, 1979-80, no. 72, illustrated in the catalogue
Tokyo, Museum of Western Art, Symbolisme en Belgique, 1982-83, no. 42, illustrated in the catalogue
Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Fernand Khnopff et ses rapports avec la Secession viennoise, 1987, no. 28, illustrated in the catalogue
Tokyo, Bunkamura Fine Arts Museum; Himeji, Municipal Arts Museum; Nagoya, City Art Museum; Yamanashi, Prefectural Museum of Art; Fernand Khnopff 1858-1921, 1990, no. 45, illustrated in the catalogue

Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque, Robert Delevoy, Catherine de Croës, Fernand Khnopff, Brussels, 1979, p. 278, no. 215, catalogued & illustrated

This work is in good overall condition. The sheet appears to be laid down to the mount, apart from partially along the lower edge. There is a faint mat mark outside the edges of the composition. Presented framed and glazed, the edges of the sheet covered by the mat.
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Executed circa 1892. Although little is known of the sitter and her links to Khnopff are unclear, the present work relates closely to another female portrait, untraced, titled Etude pour le portrait d'une dame anglaise of the same year (Ollinger-Zinque et al., op. cit., no. 195). The sitter was likely an English friend of Khnopff, whose noble physiognomy, fine dress and delicately coiffed hair he has exquisitely captured in the present work. The portrait reveals Khnopff's predilection for English art, in particular the work of Dante Gabriel Rosetti, which influenced his aesthetic of female beauty, suffused with Khnopff's own Symbolist vision of the sitter captured as if in a dream.