I was very excited to go to the Getty Museum on Sunday along with a group of friends. We reached the museums at about 11.a.m. Entry to the museum was free, but we paid $15 f or parking our car. We made to the Getty Center where we wanted to explore the exhibition on “The romance of Black in the 19th-Century French Drawings and Prints.” French artists were improving their skills and range of works, including their inspiration to explore the new subject of the darkened realms. The artwork that I have chosen to discuss in the paper is “Portrait of Jeanne Kefer” by Fernand Khnopff. When he painted the portrait, Kefir already had a great reputation among the leading figures of Brussels avant-garde (Draguet 1). Under the brush strokes of the painter, the little girl embodies a reflection on human life, and this makes the portrait an extraordinary one.
Portrait of Jeanne Kefer
Fernand Khnopff was a popular society portrait during the 19th century and was an illustrator, photographer and sculptor part from being an artist. He preferred to use elements such as moods and visual realism that worked for him as an avant-garde symbolist painter. Jeanne Kéfer was the daughter his friend (Fernand Khnopff: Portrait of Jeanne Kéfer 2016).
What we see here in the portrait is a pretty girl standing against a massive door. She is smartly dressed in a brown overcoat, dark leggings, and black shows. Her golden brown hair looks frizzy and curly and is covered with a pink hat that looks puffed up and elongated from the top. There is an enormous brown bow at her neck. Behind the child, there are big doors in pale green. One can see heavy curtains behind the glass of the door. The floor is dark and looks rough. The expression of the child is a curious one, and she looks straight ahead, with her one hand by her side and the other holding onto the sash of the bow. Kéfer’s body inhabits a stratified and vitrified space, as she stands against an abstract background (Draguet 92). The little girl is not offering a smile and is obviously unsettled, expressing her distrust in the viewer. The brushy strokes in blues and black in the door’s window contrast with the foreground of the painting.
The closed door flattens the space in the artwork. Kéfer manages to capture the vulnerability of the child as he shows her tiny thumb catching the long sash of her bow. The small gesture of the child shows her uncertainty when she faces the outside world. Moreover, the huge door behind her makes her look even smaller in size, thus increasing her vulnerability (Jeanne Kéfer 2016). The artists further isolate the subject by doing an abstract brushwork on the window of the door behind her. The attempt leaves the child cut off in the shallow background, and her look that is both fixed and haunting is certainly not warm and friendly. Her sensitive face speaks of her true self while her body seems to be a prisoner of her pose and clothing (Draguet 7).
Khnopff's brushwork carries the quality of the impression with less of sensation and more of an expression. The portrait internalizes this suggestive power immediately. The artist relies on his brush strokes rather than the powerful palette knife effects (Draguet 27). There are dominant shades of blues, grays, whites and browns that exist in harmony under the measured brushwork of the artist.
What makes the “Portrait of Jeanne Kefer” a symbolist portrait is an intense sensitivity it carries. The portrait sets the stage for sensing abstraction through the senses and develops a Symbolist approach (Draguet 21). The child seems to be afraid, constrained by melancholy and the abstract background by the painter through the windows adds another troubled edge.
Works Cited
Draguet, Michel. "Portrait of Jeanne Kéfer." Getty Museum Studies on Art 1.1 (2009): 1-108. Print
"Fernand Khnopff: Portrait of Jeanne Kéfer." shop.getty.ed. 2016. Web.2 6 April. 2016.
"Jeanne Kéfer." getty.edu. 2016. Web.2 6 April. 2016
