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 |
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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. |
.
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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