Fernand Khnopff: Inner Visions and Landscapes
September 19–December 5, 2004
Fernand Khnopff: Inner Visions and Landscapes presents over 70 paintings and works on paper that span the career of this key figure in the European Symbolist movement. The McMullen Museum of Art is the sole North American venue for this major retrospective, also the first of its size and scope to be shown in America. The exhibition includes Khnopff’s most important works from the Royal Art Museums in Brussels as well as many from private collections in Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, France, and the United States.
This exhibition provides a fascinating window into late-nineteenth century Belgium, an era in which the country was emerging as a leading international center for art. Khnopff developed his art in a highly intellectual culture that embraced and defined the major themes of Modernism. This retrospective presents all aspects of the artist’s remarkable oeuvre, including realist landscapes and mystical symbolist visionary art. The works illustrate the artist’s fascination with dreams and the unconscious as well as his interest in religion. Khnopff combines a nearly photographic realism with a polished idealism that transcends reality. He reveals himself as a multi-faceted artist, working not only as a painter and draughtsman in oils, pastels, and mixed techniques, but also as a sculptor, engraver, and architect. He also produced many photographs of his works, which he later enhanced with pastels or colored crayon. At the end of his life, Khnopff was in constant demand, illustrating books by his Symbolist contemporaries—Stéphane Mallarmé, Emile Verhaeren, and Maurice Maeterlinck—programs for charity and patriotic events, and even a banknote, which was never produced.
Fernand Khnopff opened at the Royal Art Museum in Brussels (January 16 to May 9, 2004) to overwhelmingly positive reviews in the European press and attracted over 163,000 visitors. The exhibition was organized by curator of modern art Frederik Leen of the Royal Art Museum, with distinguished scholars Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque, Dominique Marechal, Francisca Vandepitte, and Sophie Van Vliet serving as co-curators. Professor Jeffery Howe of Boston College, a specialist in Khnopff’s art, collaborated on the fully illustrated scholarly catalogue for this exhibition which is published in French, Dutch, German, and English editions.
The works of Fernand Khnopff (b. Grembergen 1858 – d. Brussels 1921) reflect a distinctive and intriguing artistic personality and provide an illuminating window on the complexities of the early modern age. Born into an old cosmopolitan family, Khnopff spent the greater part of his childhood in Bruges, Belgium. This somewhat moribund and decadent city left an indelible impression on the young artist-to-be, though he was not quite eight years old when the family moved to Brussels. To please his parents, Fernand Khnopff started studying law at the Université libre in Brussels. However, he was drawn to emerging innovations in literature and painting and left the university to study with Xavier Mellery, an artist of dreamlike imagery. At the Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, he took drawing lessons alongside James Ensor, who would become a leader of the Expressionist movement and Khnopff”s bitter rival. Khnopff also spent extended periods in Paris, where he studied the work of J.A.D. Ingres (1780-1867) and Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), and was impressed by contemporary artists Gustave Moreau and Alfred Stevens, as well as the English Pre-Raphaelites.
Fernand Khnopff has been described as the “perfect Symbolist.” Khnopff developed his art in a highly intellectual milieu, which had an ancient heritage, but was on the vanguard of modernism. Belgium, in the late nineteenth century, was at the forefront of industrialization and European economic development, and Brussels became a leading international center for art through the groundbreaking exhibitions of Les Vingt (1883-1893) and La Libre Esthétique (1893-1914). Even when exhibited amid the bold experiments of artists like Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin and Auguste Rodin, Khnopff’s striking compositions, perfect technique, and enigmatic imagery received high acclaim. They disturbed the assumptions of the viewer with subtle, but challenging, pictorial constructions. Stylistically, Khnopff combines the visual precision of earlier Flemish artists of the €fteenth century, the modern realism of the Pre-Raphaelites and, even, photography. Khnopff produced evocative landscapes and sensitive portraits, as well as mysterious allegories. His works include paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures. He also contributed to the development of modern architecture, designing his own unique house, which anticipated the designs of architects of the Vienna Secession.
