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PROPERTY OF A GERMAN PRIVATE COLLECTOR

ETUDE POUR 'LE SECRET'

image: 21 by 39.5cm., 8 1/4 by 15 1/2 in.; sheet: 26 by 44cm., 10 1/4 by 17 1/4 in.

signed FERNAND KHNOPFF l.r.

pastel on paper

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque. It will be included as number 379 ter in her supplement to the Khnopff catalogue raisonné.

NOTE

Executed circa 1902, this work relates to a photograph that Khnopff took of his sister Marguerite before a mask that he sculpted. One of a series of pastels on this theme, one of which is in the Stedelijke Museum, Bruges (fig. 1; see Delevoy, de Croës & Ollinger-Zinque, Fernand Khnopff: Catalogue de l'oeuvre, Brussels, 1987, no. 380).

Describing the subject, Hans Dervischer observes: 'In a closed, timeless still interior chamber an immobile, vampish priestess ogles a mask, almost her likeness. Fascinated, she contemplates her own mirror image, as it were, and strokes with certain pleasure the mouth of her idol: herself. The oracle, doomed to silence, shall not divulge its secret. [...] The mask represents Psyche, the personification of the human soul and also the name of some sort of mirror. Just as Narcissus fell in love with his own likeness reflected on the water, so the sphinx-like priestess longs for the unfathomable depths in herself.' (Hans Devischer, ed., Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), Brussels, 2004, p. 226).

Fig. 1, Fernand Khnopff, Le Secret, Stedelijke Museum, Bruges