Exploring the Symbolic Language of James Ensor Paintings

The painting shows the artist's sister eating oysters. Although stylistically close to Impressionism, Ensor avoided association with the French movement. Light preserved spiritual value for him, although he agreed with Impressionists that colour was more important than drawing. 

The painting was refused by the Antwerp Salon in 1882, perhaps due to the painting's sexual overtones of a young woman eating oysters. The piece belongs to Ensor's Burger Salon series, depicting the everyday life of the bourgeoisie. 

Featured image: James Ensor - The Oyster Eater, 1882, via Creative Commons

After 1888, masks would become a dominant feature in Ensor's paintings. On this canvas, he depicted a masked, ghostly figure on the left and two more masks on the right. 

The meaning of the work could only be guessed. It could be a parody of the femme fatale, who parades on the left wearing black gloves and holding a parasol with people she could have charmed fallen before her feet and reduced to just a few objects.

The painting could also be a depiction of the painter's mother or grandmother, as it is known that Ensor often caricatured them, or it could be a character from a book he read at the time. 

Featured image: James Ensor - Astonishment of the Mask Wouse, 1889, via wikiart

Human bones were a regular occurrence in Ensor's hometown of Ostend while he was a child, exhumated from locations of 17th-century warfare. In 1888, he even created a portrait of himself titled My Portrait in 1960 (when he would have been 100 years old), showing a skeleton in slippers. 

The painting belongs to a series of works that depict a similar subject, a recollection of death. Here, skeletons are represented in the foreground, surrounding a stove on which it is written Pas de feu, en trouverez vous demain? (No fire. Will you find any tomorrow?). The items around them, a violin, lamp, and a palette with a brush, are symbols of different arts, leading to the conclusion that the figures represent the vanities of a particular profession. 

Featured image: James Ensor - Skeletons Warming Themselves, 1889, Kimbell Art Museum, via Creative Commons

One of Ensor's most popular paintings shows a group of masked figures in a moment of interaction depicted in bright colours and expressive brushstrokes. A representative example of his style, the scene is much more than a depiction of a masquerade, but is a biting social commentary on the morality of his time.

Research also revealed a personal side to the depicted story - it was inspired by an actual event, the marriage between Ensor's sister and a Chinese art dealer that caused a scandal in his hometown. 

Featured image: James Ensor - The Intrigue, 1890, via Creative Commons

Between 1890 and 1896, Ensor painted a series of canvases titled The Good Judges. They show a motley group of grotesque, self-satisfied figures and are the artist's satirical take on the corrupted judiciary system in Belgium.  

It is believed that Ensor was inspired by the notorious case of  Jan Coucke and Pieter Goethals, two workers who were executed for a murder they did not commit. 

Featured image:  James Ensor - The Good Judges, 1891, via Creative Commons

The oil on canvas depicting Christ is another of Ensor's unusual representations of a familiar subject. Inspired by the painting of the same name by the 15th-century artist Albert Bouts, the work is Ensor's vision of a tortured, misunderstood man, also reflecting the existential crisis Ensor went through in the 1890s. 

Featured image:  James Ensor, born in Ostend, work representing Christ, titled The Man of Sorrows, 1891, via Creative Commons

With two skeletons fighting with brooms and umbrellas, this piece attracted both personal and more universal interpretations. The figures, defined as women, were believed to represent the artist's wife and mistress, while others suggested that the image depicts Ensor's attitude towards his critics. The people visible on the sides could thus be seen as either supporters or or those who were against the artist. 

A body hanging in the centre of the composition is described as civet, the French word for a hare stew. 

Featured image:  James Ensor - Skeletons Fighting over a Hanged Man, 1891,  Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, via Creative Commons

Although lacking in masks and and other Ensor's recognizable figures, the painting nonetheless features his unique sense of humour. The poignant scene of his mother on her deathbed is overtaken by a busy composition of bottles and medicine vials in the front, showing a mundane side of an inevitable outcome to every life. However, a sculpture of the Virgin to the right brings a spiritual aspect to the sad event.  

Ensor's masterful skill here was to show both sides of our reality simultaneously, its absurdity and tragedy and the promise of the divine beyond that perhaps awaits us. 

Featured image: James Ensor - My Dead Mother, 1915, via fineartamerica.com