Author Description

"The Belgian artist, illustrator, sculptor, and photographer Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) became a popular society portraitist in the 1880s, using elements that had served him well as an avant-garde Symbolist painter: visual realism and a mood of silence, isolation, and reverie. As in the provocative, yet hauntingly beautiful, Portrait of Jeanne Kefer that is the focus of this book, he frequently posed his models leaning against a closed door, flattening the space and resulting in a meditative, hermetically sealed image. Jeanne Kefer was the daughter of a composer-friend of the artist, and Khnopff captures the child's vulnerability to the outside world in a small gesture of her tiny thumb catching the edge of her bow." "The book places this painting in the historical context of Khnopff's times and social milieu and traces the advent of Symbolism as a literary and artistic movement. An analysis of the portrait itself is supported by an array of related paintings, details, and technical photographs. Finally, the author uses Khnopff's portraits as a taking-off point for a broader discussion of Symbolist art."--BOOK JACKET.