# Portrait of Marguerite Khnopff [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [KHNOPFF, Fernand]() - Date: 1851-1900 - Technique: Oil on canvas mounted on wood, 96 x 75 cm ## Commentary Sexual, even perverse, undertones appear in some of Khnopff's favourite themes, as in the portrait of 1887 of his sister Marguerite Khnopff, which he eventually installed in an altar-like setting in his studio and kept until his death. She appears in a tight, plain, high-necked, long-sleeved, floor-length dress, enclosed in a sparse, carefully balanced rectilinear setting that previews the interior of the house he would build for himself nearly two decades later. The powerful image of a woman held in check, almost in bondage, by her clothes and her environment had a special meaning for Khnopff, and he used it often. ## Related artworks - [After Flaubert. The Temptation of St Anthony \(detail\)]() - [After Flaubert. The Temptation of St Anthony]() - [Hortensia]() - [I lock my door upon myself]() - [Listening to Schumann]() - [Mask of a Young Englishwoman]() - [Memoires]() - [Still water \(The Menil pond\)]() - [The Game Warden]() - [The Offering]() - [The Sphinx, or The Caresses]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()