James Ensor
The painter of masks in Ostend.
James Ensor painted masked crowds and skeletons in garish colours. Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 anticipates Expressionism.
James Ensor was born in 1860 in the seaside resort of Ostend in Belgium. His father was English and his mother Belgian. The family ran a souvenir shop selling shells, china and carnival masks. Ensor studied at the academy of fine arts in Brussels in 1877–1880 but then returned to Ostend, where he lived almost all his life.
In his early years he painted dark, realistic interiors of bourgeois life. During the 1880s his palette brightened and his subjects became increasingly fantastical. The masks from the family shop became central. They appeared in teeming crowds, often together with skeletons and demons.
His principal work is Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889, painted in 1888. It shows a huge crowd of masked figures surging towards the viewer, while Christ almost disappears in the throng. The picture was so provocative that it was not shown publicly until much later. It is now in the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Ensor helped found the artists’ group Les XX in Brussels in 1883, but was often rejected even there.
His style is characterised by garish colours, coarse brushwork and biting satire against the church, the military and the bourgeoisie. He also made many etchings with the same subjects.
During the 20th century Ensor gained increasing recognition. He was made a baron in 1929 and died in 1949 in Ostend. His home is now a museum. He is regarded as a forerunner of both Expressionism and Surrealism. Paradoxically, he painted his most innovative works in the 1880s and 1890s, while much of what he made after the turn of the century repeated earlier subjects. German Expressionists such as Emil Nolde visited him and were influenced by his masks and colours.