Fernand Khnopff's Red-haired Beauties ~ Blog of an Art Admirer

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Fernand Khnopff's Red-haired Beauties

Khnopff is the most important of the Belgian Symbolists (1858-1921). Brought up in Bruges, and later in Brussels, he came of a family of magistrates and first studied law, but later turned to painting. In 1879 he went to Paris, to complete his studies in art. "There is no question that Khnopff was important at the time — his influence on many artists, e. g. on Klimt, is beyond dispute.." — — Andrea Domesle

"Khnopff was a dandy — in his habitation as much as in his pictures. His themes may be summedup in four words — pride, isolation, cruelty and disdain. He also had the dandy's fanatical interest in precision. However strange his compositions, they are never accidental. Every effect is calculated, every detail precisely and deliberately placed". — Edward Lucie-Smith
His motto was "One has only oneself".

Head of a Woman

He was an anglophile and affirmed he had British ancestors, although there were no Anglo-Saxon roots in his genealogy -- Khnopff's ancestors had lived in Flanders since the early 17th-century but were of Austrian and Portuguese descent.
He didn't deny the legend of his acquaintance with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, although for the first time Khnopff visited England 10 years after the death of a great artist and communicated only with his sister.

With Georges Rodenbach. A Dead City

All his life Khnopff had been avoiding visits to Bruges in belief that his childhood memories would be defiled with the change of the urban landscape. Indeed, in the early 20-th century Bruges became a place of tourist pilgrimage. Around 1907, however, the artist had to travel there. Right from the station he took a cab and crossed the city in a specially made scores black glasses.
For 40 years he had been painting Bruges from memory and photographs - often deserted buildings and blocks, deserted, but neat and well-groomed, with no signs of fauna and flora. «Abandoned City» (1904)is one of his best works.

The Abandoned Town

The family tomb of the Khnopffs in the cemetery of town of Bruges is decorated with a coat of arms with a gryphon - this mystical beast was always Khnopff's personal symbol.
The feminine types he used in his compositions all seem to be based upon his sister Marguerite, whose beauty obsessed him. "The Caress" is one of the most famous works, where the sphinx with Marguerite's face and a leopard body (a medieval symbol of lust) clings to a androgynous young man with a spear, again, with the features of his sister.

The Caress

Christine Rossetti, the sister of the famous Pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was also his model until her marriage. The title for this famous painting "I Locked The Door Upon Myself" he took from Christine's poem.

I Locked The Door Upon Myself

Bruges. La Morte

Listening to Flowers

Head of an English Girl

Melisande

Study of Women the kiss

In Fosset. An Evening

In Fosset, a Stream

In Fosset, Under the Fir Trees

Memories

Stil Water

With Gregoire Le Roy. My Heart cries for the Past

Who Shall Deliver Me?

The Cigarette

The Offering

The Silver Tiara

A Blue Wing

Sleeping Medusa

Requiem

The Veil

The Meeting of Animalism and an Angel

The Incense

Self-Portrait

In 1900s he had a house built to his own plans, for his own satisfaction; it was like one of the structures in his pictures, a house out of a dream with false windows - expression of his own personality. Villa Khnopff was decorated internally using only white, blue and gold. Black was used for the doors, frames and windows.
Until Villa Khnopff was constructed in 1900-2, Khnopff lived at his parents' home -- he was briefly married between 1908-1911. His first studio, which he used throughout the late 1880s and 1890s, is today the location of a bar/restaurant named Le Khnopff.
Khnopff died in 1921, a studio sale was held the following year. In the 1930s, Villa Khnopff was demolished with the approval of Khnopff's family.