Wikipedia entry
Introduction
James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for most of his life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX.
Wikidata
Q158840
View or edit the full Wikipedia entry
Information from Wikipedia, made available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License
Getty record
Introduction
Ensor was a visionary and proto-modernist artist whose use of color prefigured fauvism and expressionism, and whose fantastic, symbolist, and satirical imagery were to influence Paul Klee, Emil Nolde, and later the Cobra group. His most productive period was between 1880 and 1900, but he was not well known until the late 1920s. Although many of his works feature satirical fantasies, he also painted seascapes, landscapes, and still-lifes. He was self-taught in the art of copperplate etching and produced many masterful works in this medium. In both his graphical works and in his paintings he made use of the carnival masks sold in his family's shop in Ostend as models for figures in thronging crowd scenes, still lifes, and domestic tableaux. These works can be interpreted as critiques of the Catholic Church, the Belgian state, and society in general. His most well-known painting may be "Christ's Entry into Brussels," a large-scale work in which the title figure is dwarfed by a crowd of grotesques. He remained in Ostend for the majority of his life, leaving in 1877 at the age of 17 to study at the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels. Upon his return to Ostend in 1879 he established a studio above his parents' shop, where he produced the majority of his mature work. In 1883 he was a founding member of the Groupe des Vingt. During his lifetime Ensor's work was critiqued harshly by his contemporaries, even among the avant-garde group he helped found.
Nationalities
Belgian, English
Gender
Male
Roles
Artist, Author, Manufacturer, Art Critic, Composer, Musician, Graphic Artist, Still Life Artist, Painter, Pastelist, Pastellist
Names
James Ensor, James Sidney Edouard Ensor, Baron James Ensor, Baron James Sidney Edouard Ensor, James Ensor Baron, James (baron) Ensor, James Sidney Ensor, James Sydney Ensor, Ensor, j. ensor
Ulan
500032046
View the full Getty record
Information from Getty’s Union List of Artist Names ® (ULAN), made available under the ODC Attribution License

Works

51 works online

Exhibitions

View all 51 exhibitions

Publications

  • MoMA Highlights: 375 Works from The Museum of Modern Art Introduction by Glenn D. Lowry, 2019 Flexibound, 408 pages
  • MoMA Now: Highlights from The Museum of Modern Art—Ninetieth Anniversary Edition Introduction by Glenn D. Lowry, 2019 Hardcover, 424 pages
  • James Ensor Anna Swinbourne. Essays by Susan Canning, Michel Draguet, Robert Hoozee, Anna Swinbourne, and Herwig Todts. Catalogue by Laurence Madeline and Jane Panetta, 2009 Exhibition catalogue, Hardcover, 208 pages
  • James Ensor L. Tannenbaum, 1951 Clothbound, pages
  • James Ensor L. Tannenbaum, 1951 Paperback, pages
Licensing

If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA’s collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).

MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit https://www.moma.org/research-and-learning/circulating-film.

If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email text_per[email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA’s archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].

Feedback

This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please send feedback to [email protected].