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He was the perfect symbolist
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Fernand Khnopff's paintings are striking for their imagery
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RIDDLE ME THIS The Caresses is one of Khnopff's most baffling paintings and is supposed to be a reworking of the Oedipus and Sphinx story
Fernand Khnopff was born in Grembergen in 1858 into a wealthy family of magistrates. His childhood in the decadent city of Bruges in Belgium created an indelible impact. The family moved to Brussels when Fernand was eight. He followed the family tradition of studying law at the Université Libre in Brussels but left to study art under Xavier Mellery who was famous for his dreamlike imagery. Mellery urged him to look at painting as an enquiry into the meaning hidden in the "soul of things".
At the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, he studied drawing with James Ensor. Fernand and Ensor were the founding fathers of Les Vingt or The Twenty. The two went on to follow different artistic trajectories and became bitter rivals.
After three years at art school, Fernand left in 1879 for Paris. The works of Ingres, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Moreau, Alfred Stevens and the Pre-Raphaelites fascinated him. He held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1881. Fernand's unique style and portraits were popular in Brussels between 1884 and 1890. His international reputation was consolidated by 1900.
Described as the perfect symbolist, Fernand's artistic temper matured in a milieu that was at once ancient and contemporary. Belgium was at the vanguard of industrialisation and Brussels was the centre for intellectual development and art.
Fernand combined the precision of the Flemish artists of the 15th Century with the realism of the Pre-Raphaelites. He was also a sculptor, writer, costume designer for theatre, and photographer. The house, which he designed, was an extension of his artistic beliefs — looking like something out of dream complete with false windows.
While obsessed with realism in the detailing of his work, Fernand felt art must suggest mystery and thus his reputation as an artist of obscure symbols and allegories was born. One of his most famous and baffling paintings is The Caresses or The Sphinx, which is supposed to be a reworking of the Oedipus and Sphinx story. While Ingres represented a fairly literal interpretation of the story and Moreau gave a slightly mystical tilt to it, in Fernand's hands, it moves to a metaphysical plane. The painting is also supposed to be inspired by Balzac's story, A Passion in the Desert where a soldier of Napoleon's army falls in love with a panther.
In Fernand's painting, Oedipus is androgynous and the Sphinx, instead of eating herself up after Oedipus solves the riddle, cuddles up to Oedipus. This has been interpreted as Oedipus still being bound to his fate — of killing his father and marrying his mother and blinding himself as punishment for his crime.
The painting has also been called L'Art and is supposed to represent art itself and the youth the artist. The pansy in his ear is emblematic of le pensée or thought, an emblem Fernand often used in his signature. The youth and the Sphinx bear a striking resemblance to Fernand's sister Margueritte.
Dreams, subconscious
Fernand, deeply influenced by dreams and their relation to the subconscious, had installed a bust of Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep and dreams, in his private palace of art, as a photograph taken in 1900 shows.
He was friends with Belgian symbolist poets whose poems he illustrated. From their works he took the themes of "silence, solitude and deserted towns". Though extraordinarily popular, Fernand guarded his privacy zealously. He was awarded the Order of Leopold for his contribution to art. He died in Brussels in 1921.
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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