Ensor, James Ensor, Baron

Ensor, James Ensor, Baron

(jĕms äNsôr`), 1860–1949, Belgian painter and etcher. Ensor's imagery reflected one of the most bizarre and powerful visions of his era. He left his native Ostend to study painting (1877–80) at the Académie de Bruxelles. In Brussels he became one of the original members of "Les XX," a group of avant-garde, politically and aesthetically progressive artists, writers, and musicians. Ensor exhibited with them regularly until 1888, when his pictures, particularly the Entry of Christ into Brussels, (1888, J. Paul Getty Mus., Los Angeles) were rejected as scandalous. While the public and press were at first hostile to his work, his paintings continued to be exhibited, and he gradually won worldwide acclaim. In 1929, Ensor was made a baron by King Albert. His home in Ostend became a museum after his death.

Ensor's early style of painting is characterized by somber color, thick impasto, and an earthy realism with some elements of the fantastic. Toward 1883 his palette lightened, and by 1887 his paintings were flooded with intense light and strong color. From the 1880s to 1900 he produced his most inventive and original work. Ensor's sources included the grotesque fantasies of BoschBosch, Hieronymus,
or Jerom Bos
, c.1450–1516, Flemish painter. His surname was originally van Aeken; Bosch refers to 's-Hertogenbosch (popularly called Den Bosch), where he was born and worked.
..... Click the link for more information. , BruegelBruegel,
 Brueghel,
or Breughel
, outstanding family of Flemish genre and landscape painters. The foremost, Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, c.
..... Click the link for more information. , and CallotCallot, Jacques
, c.1592–1635, French etcher and engraver, b. Nancy. Callot was an influential innovator and a brilliant observer of his time. In 1612 he went to Florence where he learned to etch and where he developed and introduced the use of a hard varnish ground that
..... Click the link for more information. . He portrayed a fractured world, filled with leering masks, clowns, skulls and skeletons, and carnivallike scenes as well as scathingly satirical tableaux of doctors, clergy, lawyers, politicians, and other emblems of respectable society. Among his masterpieces is The Temptation of St. Anthony (1887, Mus. of Modern Art, New York City). By 1900 the significant part of his work was finished; during the last 50 years of his life his paintings show hesitant draftsmanship and an absence of internal structure. Ensor ranks as one of the great innovators of the late 19th cent.; his art transformed reality, opening the way for such 20th-century movements as surrealismsurrealism
, literary and art movement influenced by Freudianism and dedicated to the expression of imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and free of convention.
..... Click the link for more information.  and expressionismexpressionism,
term used to describe works of art and literature in which the representation of reality is distorted to communicate an inner vision. The expressionist transforms nature rather than imitates it.
..... Click the link for more information. .

Bibliography

See J. Elesh, ed., James Ensor: The Complete Graphic Works (2 vol., 1981); D. Lesko, James Ensor: The Creative Years (1985); C. de Zegher, ed., Between Street and Mirror: The Drawings of James Ensor (museum catalog, 2001); A. Swinbourne, James Ensor (museum catalog, 2009).