***April 2005*** |
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James Ensor
April 13, 1860 – November 17, 1949
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James Ensor was born in Ostend, Belgium, the
son of parents who owned a souvenir shop that sold carnival
masks among other goods, which became a major influence
throughout his paintings.
At the age of thirteen, he received instruction in painting
from two local Belgian artists, Edouard Dubar and Michel
Van Cuyck. By sixteen he was painting landscapes and seascapes
on cardboard and began taking drawing courses at the Ostend
Academy.
In 1877 Ensor moved to Brussels to study at
the Academy of Fine Arts but returned to Ostend in 1880
where he set up a studio in the attic of his parents' house
and began painting and preparing for his first show with
the Belgian art society “L’Essor”. Though
his works included in this exhibition where called “trash”
by a Belgian art critic, he continued to press forward and
submitted a painting to the Antwerp Salon, where it was
harshly rejected.
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In 1884 he travelled to Holland
and Paris and submitted several pieces into the Brussels Salon
where, once again, he was rejected. By this time Ensor was
slowly abandoning his landscape and still life imagery and
beginning to paint mask and skeleton motifs, influenced by
both the bright colours of the Impressionists and the grotesque
imagery of early Flemish masters such as Hieronymus Bosch
and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
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He intentionally used harsh colours and broken brushstrokes to
heighten the violent effect of his subject matter which led to his
work having an important influence on 20th-century painting paving
the way for Surrealism, Dada, brushwork and Expressionism.
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In 1893, feeling betrayed by the art world, and forbidden by
his family to marry the woman he loved, Ensor plunged into the depths
of despair and decided to sell the contents of his studio for 8,500
francs, but there were no takers.
James Ensor continued painting throughout this time of isolation,
dealing largely with crowds of people as his subject, which he said
filled him with revulsion and disgust. He portrayed them as clowns
or skeletons or replaced their faces with carnival masks and represented
humanity as stupid, loathsome and vain. |
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After the turn of the century,
Ensor finally received acclaim for his work. A book about
his life and work was published in 1908 and confirmed his
standing and reputation. He continued to paint and gain
notoriety for his work.
In 1915 he was arrested for having publicly insulted Kaiser
Wilhelm II, but this never tarnished his reputation as an
artist.
He continued to have much success painting and exhibiting
extensively until he became ill towards the end of November
1949 and died at the age of eighty-nine. |
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