James Ensor: The Complete Story
James Ensor was the painter of masks, skeletons and carnival crowds, made in a souvenir shop by the sea. Born in Ostend in 1860, he painted his scandalous Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1888, then waited forty one years to see it exhibited.
He barely left one Belgian beach town, and modern painting's strangest company, Expressionists and Surrealists alike, came to him. Here is the hermit of Ostend.
James Ensor at a glance:
1860: born in Ostend above the family shop of masks, shells and carnival goods; he will live in the town 89 years.
1883: co-founds Les XX in Brussels, the avant-garde circle that will later refuse his biggest painting.
1886: takes up etching so that something of his will outlast paint: 133 plates in the end.
1888: paints Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889, too big and too rude to be shown for 41 years.
1949: dies a baron, with a statue already standing and his worst enemies long outlived.
Born above the mask shop
Ensor's English father drank; his Flemish mother ran the family shop of souvenirs and carnival masks below the flat where James grew up.
The stock became his cast: the masks, shells and skeletons that fill his paintings came literally from downstairs. Apart from three unhappy years at the Brussels academy, he lived in Ostend his whole life, painting in the attic.
Les XX, and the painting they refused
In 1883 he co founded Les Vingt, Brussels' avant garde exhibition society.
Five years later he outran even them: Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889, painted in 1888, is a wall sized mob of masks, banners and brass bands swallowing a small Christ, part gospel, part carnival, part riot.
Les XX declined to show it. The painting stayed rolled in his studio and was not publicly exhibited until 1929, the year Belgium made him a baron.
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The myth: the mad visionary
The skeleton paintings, he painted himself as one, warming at a stove, read like madness, and Ensor enjoyed the role.
The record shows a sharp satirist with total technical control: the early bourgeois interiors are as fine as any Belgian realism, and the grotesques are aimed, at critics, academies, king and crowd, with a pamphleteer's precision.
He also composed music, wrote ferocious essays, and played his harmonium for visitors well into old age.
The long anticlimax
Ensor's revolution was over by 1900; he lived another half century, repeating his motifs, receiving honours, becoming Ostend's monument.
Albert Einstein, holidaying on the coast in 1933, was brought to meet him, physics' icon and painting's hermit photographed together on the dike. He died in Ostend in 1949, at 89, having outlived every movement he had anticipated.
Where to see Ensor
Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 hangs at the Getty in Los Angeles, which acquired it in 1987. Belgium keeps the rest: the KMSKA in Antwerp holds the largest collection, Ostend's Mu.ZEE and his preserved house complete the pilgrimage.
Christ with his own face
Ensor painted and etched Christ obsessively, and the face is often his own: mocked, tried and pierced by contemporaries with recognizable faces.
In his Calvary of 1886, the lance entering Christ's side carries the name of a hostile critic, Fétis. Subtlety was never the program.
The identification was sincere all the same: the misunderstood painter as man of sorrows, in a Belgium that kept refusing his best work.
Skeletons at the stove
The skeletons came out of the house as naturally as the masks: a family of them warms itself at a stove, fights over a pickled herring, inspects his easel.
Death, domesticated into Flemish comedy, with the timing of a music-hall act.
His most famous etching, The Cathedral, stacks an ant-like crowd beneath permanent Gothic stone: the whole Ensor argument in one plate.
The baron at the harmonium
The late Ensor traded paint for music. He improvised for guests on a harmonium and composed a ballet, La Gamme d'amour, sets and costumes included.
Belgium, having starved him, then decorated him: a barony in 1929, a statue in his lifetime, streets renamed while he could still walk them.
Visitors climbed to the rooms above the shop, Einstein among them, and were received amid masks, shells and chinoiseries: the host of the museum of himself.
The James Ensor questions that keep coming up
What is he known for? Masks, skeletons and the giant carnival of Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889.
Why masks? His family's Ostend shop sold carnival masks; he grew up above the stock.
Why was the Entry not shown? Too scandalous even for the avant garde: painted in 1888, first exhibited in 1929.
When did he die? In Ostend in 1949, at 89, a baron since 1929.
Did Ensor ever leave Ostend? Barely: short trips to London, Paris and Holland. He said the North Sea light was teacher enough, and stayed 89 years.
Is the mask shop still there? The house on Vlaanderenstraat is now the Ensorhuis museum, with the shop reconstructed on the ground floor, masks included.
More secrets to unlock
A riot behind glass in Los Angeles
The painting Belgium could not hang is now in Los Angeles: the Getty bought Christ's Entry in 1987, and it dominates its gallery like a riot behind glass. The canvas that waited forty one years for a wall has spent the decades since as its country's most famous artistic export.
