Fernand Edmond Jean Marie Khnopff 1858-1921

I advertised in a local online neighbourhood journal to see if I could find anyone, with a garden, willing to host four lovely Hellebores until mid-Autumn. I had been given three super specimens as a present by a visiting Dutch friend in January, to add to the single one my terrace already boasted. All four have given an amazing and prolonged flowering during the winter months but, a terrace is not quite a garden, and I needed the room while the plants died off to re-regroup next Winter. Astonishingly, a lovely couple immediately contacted me and the plants left yesterday for their new home in someone else’s garden. Chatting about art to the ‘hosts’, I discovered the name of Fernand Khnopff, a Symbolist artist born to a wealthy bourgeois family in Grimbergen, in Flanders, in 1858. The reason his name was mentioned was because one of his Bruges paintings, The Abandoned City, was based on the architecture of Woensdagmarkt where I live. I was so intrigued and as soon as I could, I trawled for information online. I was quite unprepared to discover so much about a cult figure of early 1900s art of whom I had never heard. The older one grows, the more infinite becomes the depth of ignorance.

Fernand Edmond Khnopff
Belgian Symbolist Painter
1858-1921

The Abandoned City
Based on the architecture of Woensdagmarkt.

In his early childhood, in 1859, Fernand Edmond Jean Marie Khnopff moved to live in Brugge when

his father was appointed Substitut Du Procureur Du Roi, before leaving for Brussels in 1864. Clearly, the architecture and atmosphere imbibed during his early childhood, of the mediaeval city of Bruges surfaced to play a notable role in his later artistic work. During his period studying Law at the Free University of Brussels, he developed a passion for literature, discovering the works of Baudelaire, Flaubert, and other French authors and with his brother Georges, he joined Jeune Belgique, a group of young writers including Max Waller, Georges Rodenbach, Iwain Gilkin and Emile Verhaeren.

Emile Verhaeren

Eventually, the young Fernand dropped out of Law School and enrolled at the Cours De Dessin Apres Nature at the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels where a contemporary student, destined to become famous, was James Ensor. [The two met but did not admire each other and, in later life, became rivals.] During trips to Paris between 1877 and 1880, Khnopff discovered the works of Delacroix, Ingres, Moreau and Stevens and at the Paris World Fair of 1878 he became acquainted with the oeuvre of Millais and Burne-Jones, notable Pre-Raphaelites.

Marguerite Khnopff, Fernand's
sister and muse.

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His first work was exhibited at the Salon de L’Essor in Brussels in 1881 and the critics’ reaction was harsh except for that of Emile Verhaeren who wrote approvingly of his art and became a life-long supporter. In 1883 Khnopff was one of the founding members of the Groupe des XX and exhibited at the annual Salon organised by Les XX. In 1885 he met the French writer, Josephin Peladan, who asked him to design the cover for his new novel, Le Vice Supreme, but the cover Khnopff created offended an eminent soprano, Rose Caron, who thought that the imaginary character he portrayed, libelled her. The vehemence of her reaction caused a sensational controversy, amplified in the French and Belgian press, inadvertently publicising his work and establishing him more securely in the public eye. Khnopff eventually destroyed the offending work, but continued to be invited by Peladan to design illustrations for his work.

Jeanne Kefer
An early portrait in 1885 showing Khnopff's ability
to mix visual realism with feelings of vulnerability
and silence.

In 1889 Khnopff had his first contacts with Britain where he often subsequently stayed and exhibited. Gradually he met all the important British artists like Watt, Hunt, Rossetti, Morris and Burne-Jones and from 1895 he worked as correspondent for the British art journal, The Studio, reporting about the artistic developments in Belgium and in Europe generally, and producing the rubric, Studio-Talks-Brussels. He also wrote and lectured on the British Arts and Crafts pioneers such as William Morris and Walter Crane whom he greatly admired. In 1898 he presented a selection of 21 works in the first exhibition of the Vienna Secession where his work was rapturously received. His work in Vienna became an important influence on the work of Gustave Klimt, one of the founder members of the Vienna Secession which was an art movement formed in 1897, of Austrian painters, graphic artists, sculptors and architects, closely related in style to Art Nouveau.

From 1900 Khnopff was absorbed in the building of his new home and studio in Brussels [sadly, since demolished] The design was inspired by the Vienna Secession movement, particularly by the architecture of Joseph Maria Olbrich, and Khnopff added highly symbolic, decorative concepts to turn the house and studio into a temple where his artistic genius could flourish; it was also a private tribute to avant-garde Symbolist art. His motto, On a que soi [One has but oneself] was inscribed above the main entrance and his passion for the theatre was demonstrated in his studio where a golden circle set in a white mosaic floor, marked the spot where he stood to paint. At the same time, he became actively involved in theatre designs and in 1903 he sketched the sets for a production of Le Mirage by Georges Rodenbach, directed by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin. The sets, greatly appreciated by the German audiences, evoked the gloomy, mysterious streets of Brugge where he had spent his very early childhood.

Palais Stoclet
now a World Heritage Site.

Also in 1903 Khnopff designed both costumes and sets for the World premiere of Ernest Chausson’s opera, Le Roi Arthus at the Theatre Royale de la Monnaie in Brussels and the scene was set for the following decade of theatre design for Fernand and even wider international fame. In 1904 the city council of Saint Gilles commissioned him to design the ceilings of the Salle de Marriages in the new Town Hall and simultaneously, Adophe Stoclet, a wealthy banker chose him to produce the decorative panels for the music room of the Palais Stoclet. Famous Vienna Secession architect, Josef Hoffmann, designed the Palais and Gustav Klimt, the decorative mosaic in the dining room. A happy reunion of some of the important Vienna Secession artists and an acknowledgement of the cult status of Khnopff by this time.

Fernand Khnopff was elected a member of the Classe des Beaux-Arts of the Académie Royale de Belgique in 1907, and contributed motions and articles to their Bulletin from 1912-1920. Publication of this journal was interrupted during WWI, but a supplement published in 1919 included numerous works written between 1915-18. Among them is a passionate argument for artistic reparations for the damage caused to Belgian cities by the German occupation, including the return of the missing panels from the Ghent Altarpiece from the Berlin Museum. During the war, he taught painting classes, wrote and continued to create. His last published article was in 1921 on the works of art inspired by Dante, tracing the artistic representation of the major texts of the Italian writer by artists from Botticelli to Rodin. This gave him ample opportunity to praise one of the British Pre-Raphaelites whom he most admired, Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

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