“This work shows resemblances with “Mask with a black curtain” by Fernand Knopff’s. The subject of the work is unknown.

The gaze- looking, being seen, not being seen, sight obscured, direct glance, indirect perception- dominates Fernand Khnopff's work--indeed, simultaneously constitutes theme and form, process and substance.

Khnopff's iconography includes mirrors; mirroring surfaces of water; reflected objects; windows; riveted, staring eyes; veiled eyes. The eye of the photographic apparatus, too, is a crucial, even defining, device.

His work is a contemplation of the ontology of image making, an effort to define the role of perception and the visual arts between essence and phenomenon. Khnopff's self-consciousness or self-scrutiny is consonant with the essence of the Symbolist idealist aesthetic, embracing a Neoplatonic (or Schopenhauerian) model by which the work of art reveals in its pure forms a higher reality.' For many artists of this generation, and certainly for Khnopff, this ideal often emerged in the context of mysticism or occultism or Wagnerism-that is, spheres of interest that inevitably carried specific iconographic contexts. Symbolism, however (just as it cannot be defined stylistically), transcends themes and subject matter, no matter how suggestive they may be of the aesthetic core. Symbolism is the communication of a higher reality through the intrinsic elements of the art form. In the end, it is Khnopff gaze, his search for meaning in the movement among representation, re-flection, and reality.

Here the gaze is uncompromisingly direct. The face, which fills the composition, is truncated by the edges of the work; the eyes are dangerously close to the upper edge of the paper.This cropping of faces and façades is a means of intensification, a device related to the round format that Khnopff favored.The vertical curtains at the far edges accentuates the geometry of the severely idealized face-the horizontal elements of mouth and eyes, the emphatic vertical of the nose. This eye fixes the flat geometric patterns of the composition and pierces the flatness of the image.” Certain parts of the work are illuminated, enhancing the drawing’s spectral aura. (Excerpt from THE GAZE OF FERNAND KHNOPFF by Dorothy Kosinski article)

“By taking an interest in photography, practising it and following the development of new techniques, Khnopff joined a generation of artists for whom photography in no way threatened the integrity of their creative desire.Just like Gustave Moreau, Alphonse Mucha, Edvard Munch and Franz von Stuck, he used photography to produce sketches for composition and as a store of images from real life. However, he was one of the few artists to incorporate photos of his own works in order to create new original works.” (Excerpt from the Fernand Khnopff catalogue)

Fernand Khnopff had a recent important solo exhibition at Petit Palais in Paris in 2018-2019 !