# Hortensia [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [KHNOPFF, Fernand]() - Date: 1851-1900 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 cm ## Commentary This work restages a popular domestic genre subject, a woman reading. Khnopff titled the painting Hortensia, the French word for the hydrangea that dominates the foreground. A single bright red blossom placed suggestively on the tabletop punctuates the inventive composition. The quiet, intimate interior scene is a modern variation on a tradition stretching back to Vermeer, a touchstone for nineteenth-century Belgian artists. Khnopff updated the motif by turning pictorial convention on its head. The figure - typically the focus of composition - is set in the far left corner and partially cut off by the door frame; pride of place is given to the blossoming hydrangea, placed just off-centre in the immediate foreground. This inventive layout, accentuated by the cropped, close-up viewpoint, creates the feeling of a private moment glimpsed in passing. Although Khnopff produced few works in the vein of Hortensia, certain qualities developed in the canvas were key to his mature style: the muted palette, the carefully articulated geometries of the interior, and the sense of contemplative harmony. The association of women with flowers became a leitmotif in his art, albeit with heightened symbolic resonance. ## Related artworks - [After Flaubert. The Temptation of St Anthony \(detail\)]() - [After Flaubert. The Temptation of St Anthony]() - [I lock my door upon myself]() - [Listening to Schumann]() - [Mask of a Young Englishwoman]() - [Memoires]() - [Portrait of Marguerite Khnopff]() - [Still water \(The Menil pond\)]() - [The Game Warden]() - [The Offering]() - [The Sphinx, or The Caresses]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()