Oil on board. Featuring a portrait of a woman. Signed FERNAND KHNOPFF on the lower left corner. Inscribed FERNAND KHNOPFF (1858-1921) two times on verso. 31 x 23.5 cm (12.2 x 9.3 inches). PROVENANCE: Private European collection (Manchester, United Kingdom)

Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) is the most important of the Belgian Symbolists (apart from the very different James Ensor), and his rediscovery constitutes the great achievement of the present [i.e. 1970s] enthusiasm for Symbolist art. Brought up in Bruges, and later in Brussels, he was influenced when young by his reading of Flaubert, Baudelaire and the Parnassian poet Leconte de Lisle. As he came of a legal family, he first of all studied law, but later turned to painting under the guidance of Xavier Mellery, an exhibitor in the Salons de la Rose+Croix and member of Les XX. In 1879 he went to Paris, to complete his studies in art, and there became infected with an enthusiasm for Moreau. He did not stay there long; in 1880 he returned to Belgium, and in 1883 he scored his first public success with a painting entitled Listening to Schumann. It made him seem, according to his biographer Dumont-Wilden, 'both attractive and suspect' in the eyes of the Belgian public.

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