Fernand KHNOPFF Grembergen, 1858 - Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, 1921 Head of Hypnos Bronze with shaded brown-green patina Height: 24.5 cm (9.64 in.) Resting on an onyx pedestal Total height: 31.5 cm (12.40 in.) Head of Hypnos, bronze with nuanced green patina, by F. Khnopff Provenance: Private collection, Bordeaux Bibliography: related : Robert L. Delevoy, Catherine De Croës, Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque, 'Fernand Khnopff, catalogue de l'œuvre', Brussels, 1979 (and re-ed. 1987), pp. 327-328, no. 363 Jeffery W. Howe, 'The Symbolist Art of Fernand Khnopff', UMI Research Press, n°28, 1982, p.111-113 Michel Draguet, 'Khnopff ou L'ambigu poétique', Paris, 1995 Frederik Leen, Dominique Maréchal, Gisèle Ollinger-Zinque, 'Fernand Khnopff, 1858-1921', cat. exp. Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 2004, p. 164, n°98 Michel Draguet, Dominique Morel, 'Fernand Khnopff: le maître de l'énigme', Album de l'exposition, Paris, Petit Palais, 11 December 2018 - 17 March 2019, p. 58-69 Commentary: A leading figure in Symbolism, a movement that set itself apart in the European artistic landscape at the turn of the twentieth century, which was dominated by the post-impressionists and the early avant-gardes, Fernand Khnopff succeeded in becoming an artist apart even within his own movement, so much so that he devoted his life to the service of a total art, powerfully evocative of meaning, with a very particular aesthetic and style. He imbued his art with a sensitive melancholy from the outset, both in his landscapes and in his family portraits, and in 1891 he made a trip to London that had a profound effect on his life. During a visit to the prestigious British Museum, our artist had a real encounter with the object that was to become essential to his career: a small fragmentary antique head attributed at the time to the Greek sculptor Scopas (circa 420 - 320 BC), depicting Hypnos, the god of sleep (fig. 1). At the time, Khnopff had not yet integrated this subject, which would later become an obsession, into his imagination and his creations. It was first of all in the visual sense that the object overwhelmed him. Throughout his young career, he had sought to render with infinite accuracy the melancholy power of the eyes, that fixed, cold gaze that looks almost without seeing. His portraits bear witness to this constant search, which seemed unconscious to the artist at the time, but which revealed itself to him when he saw this antique. This obsession with Hypnos, which led him to build a votive altar in his home, seems in reality to be the fruit of an obsession with the gaze and the constant problem of its artistic materialisation. All his creations bear the mark of this obsession, with our mask becoming an essential milestone in the development of his art. In 1900, his fascination with this work led him to overmould the plaster version sold by the British Museum in order to make a bronze print1. Before that, he had already included his version of the object in several of his paintings, most notably in L'Aile Bleue, painted in 1894 (fig. 2). 1. Two other versions of our bronze have recently come onto the art market. One, with a more uniform patina, sold for €38,240 at Christie's in London on 17 June 2004, under no. 64. The other, with a beautiful patina tinged with gold, was sold in our rooms on 27 March 2019, under No. 121 (sold for €62,400).