James Ensor

Belgian, 1860-1949

Biography James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter, printmaker, and draftsman, an important influence on Expressionism and Surrealism, who lived in Ostend for almost his entire life. His parents owned a souvenir shop in the tourist town of Ostend, selling carnival novelties and seaside trinkets which inspired Ensor throughout his artistic career. Educated in traditional painting at the Brussels Academy, he began his artistic career as a portrait painter but in 1883 established and became the leader of the avant-garde group, Les XX (the Twenty), whose goal was to promote new artistic developments throughout Europe. Between 1885 and 1888, Ensor's attention went chiefly to drawing and printmaking. Under the influence of Rembrandt, Redon, Goya, Japanese woodcuts, Brueghelian images and contemporary spoofs, Ensor developed a highly personal iconography and design. He worked mainly in etching, a fine linear technique that suited his predilection for bizarre and meticulous details. Making a total of 140 etchings during his lifetime, they exemplify the artist’s use of grotesque details and fantastical symbolism to satirize the social and political foibles of his day. In these works, Ensor suggests that humankind’s excesses will come to no good, a theme found in many of his paintings and works on paper. Initially received with harsh criticism by his fellow avant-garde artists and critics, Ensor finally won acclaim and respectability and was given the title of Baron in 1929. The 1908 publication of a book about his life and works confirmed his standing and reputation. In later years, he wrote music, designed sets for ballets, and continued to paint until his death at eighty-nine. His work played an influential role upon the German Expressionist artists, including Alfred Kubin, Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Georg Grosz, who understood that 'le peintre des masks‘ (the painting of masks) radically broke with the classical West-European artistic values and traditions.

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