JAMES ENSOR

(1860-1949)

Born in Ostend, Belgium.

He was son of a Flemish mother and an English father. As a child, he loved to be in his grand-mother's shop, in which she sold masks, boxes ornamented with shells, and Oriental knick-knacks.

Ensor studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and soon began painting  as impressionist. But  under the aegis of the great Belgian painter and print-maker Félicien Rops his technique began to change and his paintings, by virtue of his technique and its figures, anticipated Fauvism and  Expressionism.

We may also consider that, with his technical innovations, he was a great percursor of  Surrealism without forgetting that some of his works are not so far from the old Flemish masters  Bosch and Bruegel.

He was a complete artist who created his own universe side by side with the world of reality. In fact, he drew his inspiration from reality, his exceptional talents are shown most clearly in the fantastic visions and masks that became symbols of human passions.

In 1929 he was named Baron by King Albert.

In the last years of his life he lost enthousiam in painting and turned to musical experience becaming a gifted improviser on the harmonium.

Lived and worked in Ostend but his art is everywhere. In private collections and in the best museums of the world. 

"self-portrait  with flowered  hat",  1883

"studio atributes"

auto portrait

"Carnaval en Flandre"

"change"

"demons teasing me"

"eating oysters"

"Russia music",  1881

"skeletons fighting over a hanged man",   1891

"the baths at Ostend"

"les toits d'Ostende"

"the  drunkards"

"mask playing cards",  1896