Exhibition in Focus

Exhibition in Focus An Introduction to the Exhibition Introduction for Teachers and Students James Ensor (1860–1949), Belgium’s most celebrated artist of the modern age, is best known for his bizarre, unsettling and often darkly humorous paintings of masked figures and energetic carnival scenes. But Ensor’s work went beyond an idiosyncratic focus on magic and masks, having developed from early landscapes, still-lifes and interior scenes, it later explores worlds of the imagination, spirituality, caricature and political satire. Ensor loved to experiment. His painterly style was often loose and free – in places, almost manic in its intensity. He was one of a number of artists whose work Written by Tom Jefreys marked a radical shift from the realistic tradition that dominated the art of the mid- nineteenth century. Initially, Ensor’s work was too strange and new to be accepted For the Learning Department by the artistic establishment, but in the first decades of the twentieth century his © Royal Academy of Arts reputation blossomed. In 1929, he was made a baron by King Albert I of Belgium, and in 1933 he was awarded the prestigious Legion d’honneur. Ironically, by the time he received such recognition, Ensor’s visionary inventiveness had begun to Intrigue: James Ensor by Luc Tuymans fade and he was painting far less frequently. Te Sackler Wing of Galleries Ensor was born in the small seaside city of Ostend in northwest Belgium, 29 October 2016 to 29 January 2017 where he lived almost all his life. He was inspired by the sights of the town, its coastline and the North Sea light, its carnival summers and long dark winters. But Ensor also pushed beyond what came before him, exploring religious allegory, political satire and personal mythology. At his best, Ensor was inventive and original, his career marked by radical shifts in style and subject matter. In addition to painting, Ensor also produced drawings in crayon, pencil and charcoal as well as numerous etchings and drypoint prints. He once wrote to art critic André de Ridder, ‘The artist must invent his style, and each new work demands its own.’ Ensor had a profound influence on later artistic movements, such as German Expressionism and French Surrealism. Emil Nolde (1867–1956), Paul Klee (1879– 1940) and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) all acknowledged their debt to FRONT COVER Cat. 73, The Intrigue, 1890 (detail) Ensor. So it is fitting that the Royal Academy invited artist Luc Tuymans, a fellow Belgian, to curate this exhibition. Tuymans represented Belgium at the 2001 Venice Biennale and has been the focus of several retrospective exhibitions at major institutions, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Tate Modern, London; and Haus der Kunst, Munich. Like Ensor, Tuymans is a figurative painter whose works often explore contemporary social and political issues through intense Designed by Isambard London. Thomas, and unsettling portraits. Tuymans first encountered Ensor’s work as a teenager and has remained an admirer ever since. He chose to focus on the most celebrated and innovative period in Ensor’s career – from the mid-1880s to the mid-1890s. Printed by Geoff Neal Group Te RA is a unique organisation that remains true to its origins in 1768 as a place where art is made, exhibited and debated. Our aim is simple: to be a clear, strong voice for art and artists. Te RA’s Learning Department fulfils this objective by engaging people in the practice of art through hands-on creative experiences and exploring the art of the past and the present. 1 Life in Ostend James Ensor was born in 1860, in Ostend, a small coastal city in northwest Belgium with a population of 16,000. In the early nineteenth century, Ostend had a bustling port and fishing harbour, but its economy depended largely on tourism. In 1834, King Leopold I of Belgium made his summer residence in Ostend and, as the town became more refined, the ensuing decades saw the middle classes flock there from across Europe, especially from England, to enjoy its sandy beaches and atmosphere of freedom and conviviality. As a seaside resort, Ostend was a place of seasonal extremes: packed with a whole variety of people in summer, but eerily quiet in the long, dark winters. In Ostend, James’s father, James Frederic, an erudite Englishman, met Marie Catherine Haegheman, whose family ran a successful souvenir shop selling shells, masks, china, stuffed animals and other assorted curios. This shop had a major influence upon Ensor’s later work, and even in his early years, the city was a frequent source of inspiration. In the 1870s, Ensor studied drawing under two Ostend artists, Edward Dubar (1803–1879) and Michel van Cuyck (1797–1875), and spent a year at the Ostend Academy. He painted scenes of what was around him: sand dunes, seascapes, and the domestic interiors of his family and their middle-class friends. ‘From the start,’ says Luc Tuymans, ‘Ensor was a very gifted draughtsman.’ In 1877, Ensor moved to Brussels to study at the Académie royale des Beaux- Arts where he met the painters, Fernand Khnopff (1858–1921), Willy Finch (1854– 1930), and Dario Regoyos (1857–1913). But Ensor never felt comfortable at the Académie, where his work was considered too strange and radical. In 1880, he returned to Ostend, where he remained for the rest of his life. Other than a few trips to England, Holland and France and frequent visits to Brussels, Ensor stayed in Ostend, living with his parents, his sister Mitche and his aunt Mimi, at 23 Vlaanderenstraat. Cat. 24 Ensor’s studio was in the attic on the fourth floor of the family home. From its windows he could see across the rooftops, a view he painted in Large View of Ostend, 1884. Ensor used a palette knife to create different effects. The rooftops are sharply delineated in glowing tones of red and brown, the hard edge of the knife giving a precise line to the architecture. For the sky, Ensor used the flat side of the knife to smear blues and whites in horizontal and vertical lines. Cat. 24 ‘The beach is extraordinarily Large View of Ostend animated. It is a strangely During the 1880s, Ensor painted a number of similar compositions, works (Rooftops of Ostend), mottled world. Swells in characterised by a dominant sky that fills most of the canvas. Despite being the 1884 well-cut flannels rampant on nominal title of the painting, the rooftops form only a small part of the composition, Oil on canvas, a field of sand. Mussels 149 × 206.5 cm heaped upon mussels. rendering the swirling mass of clouds Ensor’s true subject. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Attractive little pieces Antwerpen, inv. 2706 Photo KMSKA © www.lukasweb.be - Art in teasing soft crablike What kind of mood does Ensor evoke through his depiction of the sky? Flanders vzw. Photography: Rik Klein Gotink / creatures. Slender © DACS 2016 How has he achieved this? Englishwomen stride angularly by. Bathers In a painting with so few specific details, why do you think Ensor chose carrying their pachydermic to include the Belgian flag flying from the church spire? shapes on broad flat feet. Toadlike peasant women. […] A rapacious tribe that sickens all sensitive souls and litters the lovely, delicately toned beach.’ James Ensor, The Beach at Ostend, 1896 2 3 Into the light Cat. 26 The influence Turner’s works had on Ensor is clear in works such as Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise, 1887. Whereas Turner’s nominal subjects In the 1830s and 1840s, English artist J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) revolutionised ‘And God said, Let there be were often drawn from the realities of the industrial revolution (ships or steam the painting of light. Before Turner, artists largely saw light as a tool by which to lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day trains, for example), Ensor has here co-opted a scene from the Bible. He sometimes make flat forms look three dimensional through the contrast of light and dark or to from the night; and let them used Bible stories to make controversial comments on contemporary society and draw attention to focal points within the composition of a painting. But Turner, who be for signs, and for politics – as in the drawing series Halos of Christ, 1885–86, in which Jesus is travelled three times to Belgium to paint, made light a subject in itself. In so doing, seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for seen as a champion of the dispossessed individual. But here, Ensor took the he paved the way for the French Impressionists such as Claude Monet (1840– lights in the firmament of the expulsion of the two humans from the Garden of Eden as a starting point from 1926) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). Turner’s work had a profound heaven to give light upon which to focus on the painting’s true subject, light. Ensor sketched Adam and influence upon Ensor and in 1887 he is thought to have visited England to see the earth: and it was so.’ The Bible, Genesis, 1.14– Eve as fleshy figures running off at the bottom-right of the composition. Eden is the actual paintings. 15, King James version represented by barely more than a suggestion of plants and trees, a dark patch of The painting of light became an important challenge for Ensor. For him, scrubby ground and hints of a lake or river. Two thirds of the composition is sky. the capture of light in art allowed it to convey ‘passion, anxiety, struggle, pain, God appears just off-centre.

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