James Ensoran overview

The Family

Mother :

Maria Catharina Haegheman

Father :

James Frederik ENSOR

Biography:James Sidney Ensor

Birth : Ostend : 13 April 1860

Dead : Ostend : 19 November 1949

Nationality : Britisch in 1929 Belgian (with an eye on obtaining the title of baron.

The Family operated a souvenir and curiosity shop in Ostend and boarded rooms out to summer guests.

The young Ensor attended the College of the Blessed Virgin in Ostend.

The women in Ensor’s life : around 1888 Ensor would meet Augusta Bogaerts with whom he maintained a lifelong relationship, though without ever living together with her

1876-80: training

1876 : attented drawing lessons at the local drawing schoolPainted dozens of small nature studies on pink cardboard

1877–1880 : he studied at the academy in Brussels.He received lessons from the Director, Jean Portales, among others. Fernard Khnopff, Theo Van Rysselberghe, Willy Finch and other future members of the exhibition associations, 'Essor and Les Vingt, were among his fellow students.

In Brussels, he met the poet and art critic Théo Hannon, who introduced him to the liberal circles of Ernest Rousseau, professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and his younger spouse, the nature expert Mariette Rousseau Hannon.

The home of the Rousseau couple was a meeting place for the artistic, literary and scientific elite of the time.

The contacts that Ensor had there-where he probably met Félicien Rops and Eugène Demolder and others-stimulated his artistic and intellectual development.

1886–1889 : Ensor would rework a number of his academic pieces into grotesque productions.

1880-84: debut In 1880 Ensor installed a studio in the attic of his parents‘ home in Ostend where he would work every now and then in the company of Willy Finch. Although he lived in Ostend until his death, he regularly stayed in Brussels and actively participated in the artistic life of the capital city. With the exception of a few excursions to London, Holland and Paris, Ensor scarcely traveled.

In 1881, he debuted with the progressive Brussels art circle, La Chrysalide. He qucikly became recognised by friend and enemy alike as one of the prominent artists of the time. His seascapes, still lifes, naturalistic figure pieces and tableaux from the life of the young, modern bourgeois woman, such as the celebrated The Oyster-eater from 1882, unquestionably belong to the major works of the European Realism and plein aire movements.

In 1883 Ensor, along with a few older students of the Brussels‘ academy, would take leave of the artists‘ association L'Essor. They established the artists‘ association Les Vingt. This will play an important role in the dissemination of various international avant-garde movements.

Early successes In 1893 Ensor fruitlessly set himself against the dissolution of the art circle Les Vingt. Octave Maus, secretary of Les Vingt, founded the exhibition association La Libre Esthétique. Ensor was regularly courted by La Libre Esthétique. The Print Room of the Royal Library in Brussels purchased a large number of etchings in 1893, followed one year later by the Kupferstichkabinett Museum of Prints and Drawings in Dresden and in 1899 by Albertina of Vienna. The rumour that in 1893 Ensor had offered unsuccessfully to sell the complete contents of his studio for 8.500 Belgian Francs (BEF) has never been documented and appears unlikely in light of his growing commercial success. In 1895, Ensor successfully solicited the Minister of Internal Affaires for the purchase of The Lamps (1880, oil on canvas) for the National Museum (the present-day Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium in Brussels). Ensor asked 2.500 BEF for the work. In 1897, he again successfully asked the city government of Ostend to purchase a painting for the City Museum. Ostend paid 2.000 BEF for Sick Wretch Warming Himself (1882, oil on canvas, destroyed in 1940). Ensor participated more actively in the local artistic life in Ostend and became chair of the Cercle des Beaux-Arts, which he established.

Ensor‘s artistic rejuvenation was noticed by German artists and critics around 1900. Alfred Kubin, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Georg Grosz, Herbert von Garvens-Garvensburg or Wilhem Fraenger understood that 'le peintre des masks‘(the painting of masks) radically broke with the classical West-European artistic values and traditions.

He was also recognised in Belgium as one of the pioneers of Modern Art. François Franck and the admirers who were members of the Antwerp exhibition association L'Art contemporain would successfully promote Ensor‘s work, both at home and abroad.

Thematic Collection Presentation

Humor

Playing with light, lighting study

Christ

Interiors

The skeleton motif

Masks

Marines

Cityscapes

Stil lifes (ingredients for a meal)

Self-portraits

HumorFrom 1886 onwards, humour becomes an important element in James Ensor‘s work.

Clearly, Ensor did not sit well with the lawyers, physicians, artists, critics and power figures of his time.

Playing with light, lighting study.Ensor spoke about light as it were a living essence. 'I have no child, but light is my daughter, the light, one and indivisible‘. Ensor‘s studies of the sea, the dunes, interiors and even his portraits are for the most part studies of light effects, whereby light sometimes plays a domineering, as in the citation, and also disruptive role.

ChristIn the first place, he chose subjects in which daemons could play a leading role. From the onset, he chose for a humourous approach, betray anti-clerical and socially-critical intentions. According to portraits and inscriptions, Ensor alluded in these works to the political and social questions with which his time was concerned.

InteriorsThe figures who populate his interiors determine the highly suggestive climate in which, on the one hand is calm and intimate, yet on the other hand is busy, tormented and the fascination for light comes in play.

The skeleton motif

In their works, reality was in conflict with the dream; the body with the soul, reason with madness. The personages were driven by the fear for death.

MasksEnsor found inspiration for his masks in his family‘s souvenir shops, in the Ostend carnival processions. The happy, carnivalesque figures conceal the visage of those who Ensor had for so long already menaced, dominated, tormented and beguiled. Masks and caricatures gave him the opportunity to express his non- conformity and to vent his frustration.

Marines

Cityscapes

Still lifes (ingredients for a meal)

Self-portraits

There are few artists who so frequently and in so many different ways reproduced their own image.