James Ensor

• Name — James Ensor • Birth Name — James Sidney Ensor • Born — 13 April 1860 • Birthplace — Ostend, Belgium • Died — 19 November 1949 • Place of death — Ostend, Belgium • Field — Painting, graphic arts • Training — Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts • Illustration — Ensor in front of "Entry of Christ into Brussels" in his house in Ostend, 1940s, photo by Albert Lilar

Ensor's father, James Frederic Ensor, born in Brussels to English parents, was a cultivated man who studied engineering in England and Germany. Ensor's mother, Maria Catherina Haegheman, was Belgian. Ensor spent his childhood in a souvenir shop run by his parents. He was fascinated by the carnival masks sold at the shop and these masks would become a source of inspiration in his works. Ensor himself lacked interest in academic study and left school at the age of fifteen to begin his artistic training with two local painters. From 1877 to 1880, he attended the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, where one of his fellow students was Fernand Khnopff. Ensor first exhibited his work in 1881. From 1880 until 1917, he had his studio in the attic of his parents' house. His travels were very few: three brief trips to France and two to the Netherlands in the 1880s, and a four-day trip to London in 1892. During the late 19th century, much of Ensor's work was rejected as scandalous, particularly his painting Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 (1888–89). The Belgian art critic Octave Maus famously summed up the response from contemporaneous art critics to Ensor's innovative (and often scathingly political) work: "Ensor is the leader of a clan. Ensor is the limelight. Ensor sums up and concentrates certain principles which are considered to be anarchistic. In short, Ensor is a dangerous person who has great changes.... He is consequently marked for blows. It is at him that all the harquebuses are aimed. It is on his head that are dumped the most aromatic containers of the so-called serious critics." Some of Ensor's contemporaneous work reveals his defiant response to this criticism. For example, the 1887 etching "Le Pisseur" depicts the artist urinating on a graffitied wall declaring (in the voice of an art critic) "Ensor est un fou" or "Ensor is a Madman." Ensor's paintings continued to be exhibited and he gradually won acceptance and acclaim. In 1895 his painting The Lamp Boy (1880) was acquired by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels, and he had his first solo exhibition in Brussels. By 1920 he was the subject of major exhibitions; in 1929 he was named a Baron by King Albert, and was the subject of the Belgian composer Flor Alpaerts's James Ensor Suite; and in 1933 he was awarded the band of the Légion d'honneur. Alfred H. Barr Jr., the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, after considering Ensor's 1887 painting Tribulations of Saint Anthony (now in MoMA's collection), declared Ensor the boldest painter working at that time. Even in the first decade of the 20th century, however, Ensor's production of new works was diminishing, and he increasingly concentrated on music—although he had no musical training, he was a gifted improviser on the harmonium, and spent much time performing for visitors. Against the advice of friends, he remained in Ostend during World War II despite the risk of bombardment. In his old age, he was an honored figure among Belgians, and his daily walk made him a familiar sight in Ostend. He died there following a short illness, on 19 November 1949 at the age of 89.

• Illustration — Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 (1888), oil on canvas, 256.8 × 378.4 cm, the Getty Museum While Ensor's early works, such as Russian Music (1881) and The Drunkards (1883), depict realistic scenes in a somber style, his palette subsequently brightened and he favored increasingly bizarre subject matter. Such paintings as The Scandalized Masks (1883) and Skeletons Fighting over a Hanged Man (1891) feature figures in grotesque masks inspired by the ones sold in his mother's gift shop for Ostend's annual Carnival. Subjects such as carnivals, masks, puppetry, skeletons and fantastic allegories are dominant in Ensor's mature work. Ensor dressed skeletons up in his studio and arranged them in colorful, enigmatic tableaux on the canvas, and used masks as a theatrical aspect in his still lifes. Attracted by masks' plastic forms, bright colors and potential for psychological impact, he created a format in which he could paint with complete freedom. The four years between 1888 and 1892 mark a turning point in Ensor's work. He turned to religious themes, often the torments of Christ. Ensor interpreted religious themes as a personal disgust for the inhumanity of the world. In 1888 alone, he produced forty-five etchings as well as his most ambitious painting, the immense Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889. Also known as Entry of Christ into Brussels, it is considered "a forerunner of twentieth-century Expressionism." In this composition, which elaborates a theme treated by Ensor in his drawing Les Aureoles du Christ of 1885, a vast carnival mob in grotesque masks advances toward the viewer. Identifiable within the crowd are Belgian politicians, historical figures and members of Ensor's family. Nearly lost amid the teeming throng is Christ on his donkey; although Ensor was an atheist, he identified with Christ as a victim of mockery. The piece, which measures by inches, was rejected by Les XX and was not publicly displayed until 1929. After its controversial export in the 1960s, the painting is now at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. As Ensor achieved belated recognition in the final years of the 19th century, his style softened and he painted less in the 20th century. Historians have generally seen Ensor's last forty or fifty years as a long period of decline, although noting a few original "superb and poignant" compositions from his later period. One author identified significant works of Ensor's late period such as The Artist's Mother in Death (1915), a subdued painting of his mother's deathbed with a still life of prominent medicine bottles in the foreground, and The Vile Vivisectors (1925), a vehement attack on those responsible for the use of animals in medical experimentation. Another stated "He would still paint pictures magnificently vigorous and bold, but they would be exceptions rather than the rule" noting works such as Our Two Portraits (1905), The Deliverance of Andromeda (1925), Port of Ostend (1933) and Ensor at the Harmonium (1933). The aggressive sarcasm that had characterized his work since the mid-1880s was less evident in his few new compositions, and much of his output consisted of mild repetitions of earlier works. Several still life paintings, void of social, political, or introspective content, stand out among his later works. Ensor turned increasingly to music in his later years, playing the harmonium and even composing a ballet-pantomime in one act, The Scale of Love (1907), complete with an original libretto, sets and costumes. He is known to have stated in later years that he had followed the wrong path in life, feeling that he should have devoted himself to music.

Early work (1879–1884) • Illustration — Woman with Turned-up Nose (1879), oil on canvas mounted on wood, 54 × 45 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — The Skate (c. 1880), oil on canvas, 79 × 98.3 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — Still Life with Chinoiseries (1880), oil on canvas, 100 × 78 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp • Illustration — Afternoon in Ostend (1881), oil on canvas, 108 × 133 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — The Oyster Eater (1882), oil on canvas, 207 × 150 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — Meadow Flowers (1883), oil on canvas, 113 × 97.5 cm, Minneapolis Institute of Arts • Illustration — The Rower (1883), Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — Scandalized Mask (1883), oil on canvas, 135 × 112 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels • Illustration — The Rooftops of Ostend (1884), Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp Mature work (1885–1899) • Illustration — Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise (1887), oil on canvas, 205 × 245 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — Tribulations of Saint Anthony (1887), oil on canvas, 117.8 × 167.6 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York • Illustration — Astonishment of the Mask Wouse (1889), oil on canvas, 131,5 × 109 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — Skeletons Warming Themselves (1889), oil on canvas, 74.8 × 60 cm, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth • Illustration — Attributes of the Studio (1889), oil on canvas, 83 × 113.5 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich • Illustration — The Intrigue (1890), oil on canvas, 90 × 150 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — The Assassination (1890), oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Columbus Museum of Art (inspired by the death of Antoine B. Fualdès) • Illustration — The Good Judges (1891), oil on panel, 38 × 46 cm, private collection • Illustration — The Man of Sorrows (1891), Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — Skeletons Fighting over a Hanged Man (1891), Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — Still Life with Ray (1892) oil on canvas, 80 × 100 cm, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels • Illustration — The Dangerous Cooks (1896), oil on panel, 38 × 46 cm, private collection • Illustration — Flowers and Vegetables (1896), oil on canvas, 79 × 98 cm; collection Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp • Illustration — The Great Judge (1898), oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, private collection • Illustration — Self-Portrait with Masks (1899), oil on canvas, 117 × 82 cm, Menard Art Museum, Komaki Later work (1900–1949) • Illustration — Still Life with Chinoiseries (c. 1906), oil on canvas, 85 × 105 cm, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp • Illustration — My Dead Mother (1915), oil on canvas, 75 × 60 cm, Mu.ZEE, Ostend • Illustration — Fantastic Still Life (c. 1917), oil on canvas, 16 × 21.5 cm, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna • Illustration — Still Life with a Cabbage (1921), oil on canvas, dimensions unknown, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands • Illustration — Girl with Masks or Eucharist (1921), oil on canvas, 57.2 × 52.5 cm, Städelsches Art Institute and Urban Gallery, Frankfurt • Illustration — Finding of Moses (1924), oil on canvas, 119 × 128 cm, private collection • Illustration — The Vile Vivisectors (1925), oil on canvas, dimensions and collection unknown • Illustration — Ensor at the Harmonium (1933), oil on canvas, dimensions and collection unknown

James Ensor was recorded at birth as James Sidney Edouard Ensor. His recorded language was French.