FOR an artist who decried religion, James Ensor, Belgium’s leading modernist painter, returned to biblical and church subjects throughout his career. While his late-19th-century contemporaries Manet, Monet, and Munch brought new colour and malleable perspective to landscapes, city scenes, and bourgeois interiors, Ensor fused religious motifs with satire in works such as Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889 (1888).
The inspiration for four shows in Antwerp, marking the 75th anniversary of Ensor’s death, “In Your Wildest Dreams” at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts (KMSKA) and “States of Imagination” at the print museum Plantin-Moretus focus on the artist’s works. Ensor’s Belgian mother and English father ran a souvenir shop in Ostend, selling the carnival masks associated with his paintings. He attended the College of the Blessed Virgin, but left school at 15, and had to contribute to the household of his mother, live-in aunt, divorced sister, and her daughter, when his father died in 1887.
After art school in Brussels, it is likely that Ensor was dependent on the women in his family, running the souvenir shop, during his early career. He set up a studio in the attic of the family home. Ensor’s first private collector was the Antwerp surgeon’s wife Emma Labotte, and he had a lifelong friendship with a fellow Ostender, Augusta Bogaerts.
Collection KMSKA — Flemish CommunityJames Ensor, The Oyster Eater
The Oyster Eater (1882), one of Labotte’s first purchases, portrays a domestic subject on the scale of a history painting or prestigious portrait. Ensor’s sister Mitche is inserted into a bourgeois still-life, a plate of oysters on the table in front of her, accompanied by bottles of beer and wine and glasses, but an empty chair opposite, suggesting a lonely feast. After refusals by two exhibitions, The Oyster Eater was shown alongside works by Monet, Renoir, and other Impressionists at the exhibition of the artistic circle Les XX, in Brussels in spring 1886.
Ensor benchmarked his art against his European peers and “In Your Wildest Dreams” places his work beside the greats of modern art. In Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise (1887), a pink-hued representation of the Creator flies in front of a lemon-yellow sun, right hand aiming a rainbow ray towards the naked, bronze, statuesque Adam and Eve fleeing at the bottom right. In the far background, three pink dinosaurs crest a dark green slope.
Near by, two landscapes by Monet, Palm Trees at Bordighera and View of Bordighera (both 1884) demonstrate an Impressionist treatment of the Italian Riviera, using light and colour as dominant compositional elements. Ensor wanted to take Impressionist technique beyond naturalistic subjects.
My standout work is Emil Nolde’s Paradise Lost (1921). Nolde’s Expressionist, elemental rendering of a seated Adam and Eve, staring out of the canvas with huge eyes, their facial expression teetering between disbelief and despair, carries an emotional punch unequalled in the show. Although the figures look naïve, the composition is careful, with a graphically marked and forked-tongued serpent wrapped around a pink pole, dividing the couple. But the serpent’s blue eyes match those of Adam and Eve, uniting all three in their downfall. An open-mouthed lion bearing down on the couple from the upper right adds to the sense that Adam and Eve are now fending for themselves.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Regenstein Endowment and the Louise B. and Frank H. Woods Purchase FundJames Ensor, The Temptation of Saint Anthony
In the late 1880s, Ensor focused on drawing over painting. New Testament narratives were reworked into contemporary scenes. In Christ’s Entry into Brussels, a military brass band, banners, flags, and texts threaten to overwhelm the haloed figure at the centre of the scene. Ensor’s draughtsmanship is evident in The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1887), in which 51 pages from his sketchbook were used to bring to life the scene surrounding the saint. Banked crowds of grotesques bearing signs for “Frites” and “Vive Antoine” surround the praying saint, while visions of the Madonna and a Christ-like face in a policeman’s hat float in dark clouds over the mayhem.
Demons Tormenting Me (1888) position a self-portrait of the artist in black crayon at the centre of a frenzied circle of shape-shifting ghouls and skeletons. In the 1920s, Ensor returned to the subject of St Anthony, rendering his temptation in both monotype in 1925 and oil-painting two years later.
Ensor’s versatility with printing techniques is showcased in the UNESCO-listed Museum Plantin-Moretus, the 1576 mansion and workshop of the Plantin printing dynasty. A photo of the artist’s father on his deathbed becomes a crayon, pencil, and chalk drawing in 1887, and an etching, showing the scene in reverse, the following year. The grotesque earthiness of Breughel and Bosch is honoured in Doctrinal Nourishment (1889), lampooning all in authority, including those who wear a mitre.
“Ensor: In Your Wildest Dreams” is at KMSKA Antwerp, Leopold de Waelplaats 1, Antwerp, Belgium, until 19 January. kmska.be
“Ensor’s States of Imagination” is at the Museum Plantin-Moretus, Vrijdagmarkt 22, Antwerp, Belgium, until 19 January. museumplantinmoretus.be