Jeanne Kéfer

Jeanne Kefer was five years old, the daughter of a Brussels pianist who was a friend of the painter. Fernand Khnopff set her alone on a doorstep, buttoned into a winter coat, her small figure measured against the tall dark door and its handle set at the height of her head, the mood of silence and slight unease that runs through all his Symbolist work, here in a simple child's portrait. Khnopff belonged to Les Vingt, the circle of twenty artists pulling Brussels toward the European avant-garde in the 1880s, and he painted this for their exhibition of 1885. He missed the deadline, and it was shown the following year instead.