Fernand Khnopff - symbolist artist from a world elsewhere

The Sphinx or The Caresses

Who shall deliver me?

Fernand Edmond Jean-Marie Khnopff was a Belgian painter, designer and engraver of the symbolist movement, born 12 September 1858, did 12 November 1921.


His work is characterised by two types of women - sphinxes and angels. Mystery lingers in the paintings, a mystery of inaccessible women in a state of idle contemplation, or surrounded by objects filled with symbolism. A symbolism, in the words of Edmond-Louis de Taeye in 1898 'not religious, nor Christian, nor mythological, but emblematic'. 

The Cigarette