19th Century Painting

• Introductory essay on Khnopff - click here

Khnopff: I lock my door  upon myself, 1891	Khnopff: I lock my door  upon myself, 1891	Khnopff: I lock my door  upon myself, 1891	Khnopff: I lock my door  upon myself, 1891
Khnopff: The Caresses,  1896,	Khnopff: The Caresses, 1896, detail	Khnopff: The Caresses, 1896, detail	Khnopff: The Caresses, 1896, detail
Gustave Moreau: Oedipus  and the Sphinx, 1864

All photos by J. Howe

1. Fernand Khnopff: I lock my door upon myself, 1891. Munch, Neue Pinakotheka.
2. Fernand Khnopff: The Caresses (The Sphinx), 1896. Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels.

Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) began his career when Realism was the most advanced style in Belgium, and he always maintained a commitment to verisimilitude in the details of his works. However, Realism was not enough for him: he insisted that art must suggest the essential mystery behind the visible facts and facades. It was as a painter of symbols and allegories that Khnopff became famous. One of his most baffling allegories is The Caresses, or The Sphinx (1896), a revision of the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx.

The sphinx was a hybrid monster, part human, part lion, sometimes shown with eagle wings and a serpent's tail also, who blocked the mountain path to the city of Thebes and posed riddles to all who would pass. If the traveler was not able to answer, he or she was torn to pieces. In 1808 the French artist J.A.D. Ingres painted a confrontation between Oedipus and the Sphinx which follows the Greek story quite literally.

Oedipus accepts the challenge while a less brave traveler runs down the hill. Bits and pieces of the corpses of previous challengers lie on the ground. Oedipus points to himself with one hand as he answers the riddle. In the form of the riddle that has come down to us, the sphinx demands to know "What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?" The correct answer is a human being; the deeper question posed by the riddle is what is the meaning of life, and what is the nature of humanity. Although Ingres was a disciple of Jacques-Louis David, and a confirmed classicist, in this work he reveals a fascination with the irrational and the mysterious.

The French Symbolist Gustave Moreau revised Ingres' painting, presenting the confrontation between the rather androgynous hero and the sphinx in an unusually close manner. The sphinx has leapt onto his chest, and they lock eyes as she awaits his response.

They are locked in an almost hypnotic exchange of gazes, and the sphinx looks a bit anxious, as if she has realized that Oedipus will solve the riddle. Moreau was a mystic who felt that the story of Oedipus and the Sphinx was an allegory for the struggle between the soul and matter. He remarked that the sphinx's head and wings seemed to promise the ideal, but her body, being material and female was vile and a trap. The sphinx is thus a kind of femme fatale (fatal woman). Moreau wrote a commentary explaining the picture:

"It is the earthly chimera, as base as matter and as alluring, represented by this charming head of a woman, with wings presaging the ideal, but the body of a monster, a flesh-eater that rends and annihilates."
His Oedipus rises above such earthly temptations, and will destroy the sphinx through his force of will.

Fernand Khnopff's version of the subject builds on these preceding examples, but gives it a personal interpretation. As with Moreau, he depicts Oedipus as androgynous and perhaps even as a magician. Khnopff was never as misogynistic as Moreau, however. The moment shown in Khnopff's painting does not appear in any literary or pictorial source. Oedipus seems to have answered the riddle, but instead of destroying herself, the sphinx cuddles up to him and caresses him with a rather satisfied expression. This is probably because Oedipus is still trapped by fate, despite his success with the riddle. In the unfolding tragedy, he will be granted the kingship of Thebes, and will marry the queen, who is (unbeknownst to him) his mother. Knowledge does not free humans from fate. Oedipus will blind himself as punishment for having looked upon his mother's nakedness, and this blindness will also signify his lack of true vision.

EVOCATIONS OF THE UNCONSCIOUS in WORKS BY KHNOPFF

Dreams and the unconscious were central to Khnopff's art; he frequently quoted these words of Paul Bourget:

“Dreams are but lies,” says an old maxim; but when our last hour is at hand, and but a few brief minutes are left to what was “I,” pale lights that are fast growing dim, who can tell by what mark to distinguish you, O memories of the actual life, from you, O mirages from the dream life.”
Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep and dreams, became such a significant figure to Khnopff that he installed a bust of Hypnos in a private altar in his palace of art, and he declared often that “Sleep was the most perfect thing in life.” A photograph taken after 1900 shows Khnopff posing before this altar, which is inscribed with the phrase “On ne a que soi” (One has only one's self).

The bust of Hypnos figures prominently in I lock my door upon myself of 1891. Perched on a shelf in a narrow room, in which a young woman with flowing red hair and piercing eyes sits and stares out at the viewer. The title of the work is taken from a poem by British poet Christina Rossetti, and the overall work shows many resemblances to English Pre-Raphaelite art.

Click here to read "Who shall deliver me," by Christina Rossetti
Isolation and introspection are the themes here, with a hint of hypnotism and the occult suggested by the bust of Hypnos and the small golden ornament hanging from a chain in front of the woman. Spiritualism and the use of mediums to contact the dead while in a hypnotic trance was extremely popular in the 1890s, and Khnopff may be alluding to the practice in this work.

-- Jeffery Howe