Known as the greatest Belgian Symbolists, Fernand Khnopff achieved an international reputation, applying a style he developed by combined precisely depicted surfaces with enigmatic states of mind. Using this approach for his portraiture works, he became popular with Brussels society and painted thirty-four portraits between 1884 and 1890.

The son of a wealthy magistrate, Khnopff spent his childhood in Bruges. After a short period in the study of law, he enrolled at the Academie de Beaux Arts, studying under realists. He was most influenced by Xavier Mellery. In 1877, after traveling twice to Paris, he left the Academie and moved to Paris. There he trained under French Realist painters discovering Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Moreau, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Burne-Jones.

Fernand Khnopff was one of the founders of the group Les XX, a group of twenty Belgian artists formed in 1883 after the rejection of works to the L'Essor and Antwerp Salons. For ten years these "vingtistes", as they called themselves, held annual exhibitions of their art and invited other noted artists to participate. Some of the foreign artists who exhibited included James Whistler, Auguste Rodin, Georges Seurat, Odilon Redon, Vincent van Gogh,Gustav Klimt, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, and Paul Cezanne. In 1892 the society of Les XX dissolved and was transformed into "La Libre Esthetique".

Linked to the Belgian Symbolist poets, Khnopff adopted their thematic melancholy and was often referred to as painter of mystery; a symbolist, full of harmony and distinction. Like most Symbolists, he worked for Socialist causes, writing and illustrating books, creating sculptures, and taking photographs. His self-described motto was "One has only oneself" or "One's self alone".

His preferred model was his sister. Her features appear in the two kinds of women central to his work, the sphinx-woman and the angel-woman. These appear surrounded by emblems, sometimes as immaterial creatures floating in the world of memory. They exemplify his withdrawal into himself and the indulgence in dreams that characterize the period of Belgian Symbolism.