Page 38 - Studio International - September 1971

Ensor's Entry of Ensor was extremely fond of his father who, interiors, thick with plush, brass and lace.
unlike his mother, believed in allowing the In 1882, with a painting called Woman Eating
Christ into boy freedom and who introduced him to Oysters, Ensor changed direction slightly, but it
reading. He also started his son off on his was enough to give his admirers, and he already
Brussels artistic career, for Ensor liked to copy the had many, serious doubts about him. It still
illustrations in the books his father gave him. shows a bourgeois interior and the subject is
Frank Whitford In this he was encouraged by his mother. She unremarkable. But Ensor's style has obviously
ran a souvenir and curio shop in Ostend, above felt the impact of Manet and Impressionism and
which the family lived, and hoped that before this is the first picture to reveal the fascination
very long she would be able to sell local views with light which never left Ensor from now on.
painted by her son at attractive prices. But the real turning-point came in the
But Ensor's ambitions were greater than this. following year, in 1883, with a painting called
Taught by two local watercolour specialists, he The Scandalised Masks. A man seated at a table,
soon thought he could become a real artist and a half-empty bottle of wine before him, looks up
was eventually accepted by the Brussels as a woman carrying some kind of stick in her
Academy in 1877. hand comes into the room. The painting would
Apart from the three years he spent in be unexceptional were it not for the fact that
Brussels Ensor lived all his life in Ostend, all both are wearing masks, both ridiculous and
of it over one of the family shops, the contents frightening, which make the meaning of the
of which were eventually to become as much a painting extremely ambiguous. This
part of his art as of his life. For the shop was combination of ambiguity of meaning and
packed not only with souvenir kitsch, sea-shells clarity of description, the tension between the
and pictures, but also with puppets and with mundane interior itself and the bizarre masks
the carnival masks which were worn on cries out for some kind of explanation but
Mardi Gras, a festival which the people of provides only clues which contradict themselves.
Ostend still take more seriously than the Like interiors by Munch (and Ensor shares a
inhabitants of any other Belgian city. great deal with Munch), it is the way situations
Ensor's grandmother annually dressed up in are never resolved which evokes fear, the way
mask and costume until she was well over sixty. the people depicted come across as victims.
It was an easy childhood, but one which Stylistically The Scandalised Masks is less
deeply affected the imaginative child. One of advanced than the Woman Eating Oysters,
the family maids told the young Ensor stories although in view of the increasing use of masks
about giants and fairies against a background from now on the painting represents a radical
of mussels, sailing-boats and lobster-pots, of departure. What gave Ensor the idea of
masks, curios and cheap garish souvenirs, in a employing masks to add ambiguity to his
house with a highly-strung sister, a possessive paintings ? It is almost certain that the mixed
mother and a father about to drink himself to reception which met the Woman Eating Oysters
death. It was easy for Ensor to believe that the and Ensor's imminent rejection by the art
[AN EXHIBITION ENTITLED 'ENSOR TO PERMEKE : world was inhabited by spirits. Years later he establishment were responsible for turning him
NINE FLEMISH PAINTERS 1880-1950' IS AT THE related an experience of childhood which is from an interest in prosaic description to a
ROYAL ACADEMY, LONDON, SEPT. 25-NOV. 21.] as curious as it is revealing of the working of his concern for the indirect and allusive evocation
imagination : 'One night as I lay in my lighted of atmosphere. It also seems certain that the use
room, all the windows open outwards towards of masks to this end developed gradually; that
James Ensor was 28 when he painted The the sea, a large bird flew in, attracted by the The Scandalised Masks began as a straight
Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1888. It is one light, and rocked my cradle. It made an Mardi Gras scene and turned into something
of the key-works of modern painting and unforgettable impression and I was mad with else while it was being painted. Masks, after all,
anticipated many of the discoveries artists were fear. Even now I see the frightful apparition were part of the family furniture, and it is not
to make during the next 25 years. Already one and sense the shock of the black mysterious surprising that Ensor should have used them in
feels all of Expressionism is there: the obsession bird.' his paintings.
with the grotesque, the egotism, the sense of Ensor's talent was precocious. Although he Pictures like this made Ensor even more
immanent apocalypse, the contempt for the won only one prize at the Academy, and that a unpopular. Success (and two pictures had been
mob, even the political overtones. It seems to second prize for drawing from the Antique, his accepted by the Paris Salon of 1882, for
be an even more important milestone in the paintings were surprisingly mature from the example) was now a thing of the past. In 1884
early history of modernism than Gauguin's first and gained him recognition even in Paris his entire contribution to the Brussels Salon was
Vision After the Sermon, painted the same year. soon after he left the Academy. It was rejected, including the very traditional interior
James Sidney Ensor's father was an recognition Ensor knew he deserved. He was Afternoon at Ostend of 1881. The jury declared
expatriate Englishman. Disinherited but not a modest man and believed that his genre itself unable to 'admit these tendencies', even
married into a comfortable Flemish family of paintings, very much in the Flemish tradition, though it admitted that many of the already
shopkeepers, he had been trained as an engineer were the best things of their kind anyone was accepted works by other artists were nowhere
but found it difficult to find employment for producing at that time. Although they reveal a near as good. Ensor, who saw his career collapse
some reason. Ensor was not very old when his specifically Flemish influence, that of Henri de overnight, retreated to the souvenir shop, asked
father, his self-confidence destroyed by long Braekeleer, they are at once darker in tone than his mother for financial support and hardly ever
periods without a job, began a decline which de Braekeleer's work and are built up towards emerged from isolation again.
eventually ended in 1887 on the streets of highlights in thick impastos. At this time Ensor Something close to paranoia seems to have
Ostend when he died of drink and exposure. concentrated on portraits of his family, sombre taken over soon afterwards, directing, dictating,
This decline had an effect on Ensor similar to still-lifes and interiors showing people reading, determining Ensor's imaginings, and starting
the effect family tragedies had on Munch, for drinking tea or chatting in ornate bourgeois him off on the long descent into hell, a territory
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