James Sidney Ensor

born: Ostend, Belgium; 13 April 1860
died: Ostend, Belgium; 19 November 1949

Ensor's father was a British engineer and his mother was from Ostend, Belgium. Ostend was a small seaside resort town. His mother supported the family by running a souvenir and gift shop. The shop sold Chinese goods, seashells, and Carnival masks, elements that play a strong part in Ensor's art.

Ensor's sister, Mariette, was born about a year after him.

At Sixteen Ensor was already showing his talent for art. These two pictures are made with oil paint on cardboard packing from his mother's gift shop, in Ostend, Belgium.

In 1876, Ensor moved to Brussels to study at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Meets the Rousseau family, who will play a major stabilizing part in his life. This family is not related to the artistic Rouseaus, but they were prominent in Brussels and provided a way for Ensor to meet the intellectual and anarchist personalities of those early days of Belgian independence.

When Ensor, age 20, returned to Ostend, he was already a master painter. In his period he preferred a style similar to Rembrandt or at times Rubens.

The Oyster Eater
1882
Koninklijk Museum
Antwerp, Belgium

The Oyster Eater was rejected by the Antwerp Salon in 1882 and the Brussels Salon in 1884. In 1882 he displays his art in the Paris Salon and with "L'Essor", a Brussels art society. A critic calls his work "trash".

Unhappy with his rejections, in 1883, Ensor joined a group of forward looking artists called Les Vingt (The Twenty). The group in the following years held their own exhibitions and Ensor's work was frequently included.

Lady in Distress
1882
Musée d'Orsay
Paris, France

Drunkards
1883
Collection Crédit Communal
Brasses, Belgium

The Rower
1883
Koninklijk Museum
Antwerp, Belgium

Scandalized Masks
1883
Musées Royaux
Brussels, Belgium

Fans and Stuffs
1885
Kunsthaus
Zürich, Switzerland

The new turn to Ensor's work was far too revolutionary, even for Les Vingt. The Great and Glorious Entry caused contraversy within Les Vingt and at the Les Vignt salon of 1887. These artistic disagreements, led to Ensor's being increasingly isolated.

His father and his maternal grandmother both died in 1887. And Ensor's dark drawing period came to an end. He moved into light-hued fantasy pictures. About this same time, Ensor developed a hatred of the crowd, the masses who accepted authority and had no taste, and it became a major theme expressed in his art.

My Portrait in 1960
1888
[Etching]

In 1888, he met an innkeeper's daughter, Augusta Bogaerts, who will remain his friend for the rest of his life.

In 1889, Les Vingt rejected Ensor's masterpiece The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889; they also consider expelling him from the group.

Skeletons Trying
to Keep Warm
1889
Kimbell Art Museum
Fort Worth, TX, US

Two Skeletons fighting
over a Smoked Herring
1891
Musées Royaux
Brussels, Belgium

Strange Masks
[detail]
1892
Musées Royaux
Brussels, Belgium

In 1893 Les Vingt holds its final exhibition. Les Vingt is disbanded and a new group "La Libre Esthetique" is founded to replace it. Ensor feeling completely isolated attempts to sell his studio and all its contents for 8,500 francs, but no one is willing to buy.

In 1895, Ensor's luck begins to change. A Brussels museum buys The Lampboy and some drawings and etchings. His first one man exhibition is held in Brussels.

In 1898, Ensor has his first one man show in Paris at "Salon des Cent" and in the following year there is a showing of his work in Ostend. A Vienna museum buys about a hundred of his etchings.

Death and the Masks
1900

In 1900 Ensor turns forty and in 1903 he is named a Knight of the Order of Leopold. His period of creativity and insolence, sparked by the rejections of critics and the public is mostly over.

Greed

Lust

Anger

In 1920, just after the first world war, Ensor turns sixty and has his first major retrospective in Galerie Girous in Brussels.

In 1929, his “Entry of Christ into Brussels”, done 40 years earlier, is first exhibited publicly, King Albert of Belgium makes him a Baron.