Artist · 20 prints
James Ensor Prints
About James Ensor
James Ensor (1860–1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, born in the seaside town of Ostend on 13 April 1860. His family ran a souvenir shop selling carnival masks, novelties and seaside trinkets. At seventeen he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. He was associated with Les XX ("The Twenty"), an independent artists' group founded in 1883. He was made a baron by King Albert in 1929 and died in Ostend on 19 November 1949.
The carnival masks sold in his parents' shop fed Ensor's best-known subject: grinning, grotesque masked faces that crowd his paintings and prints. His large painting Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 sets a small figure of Christ inside a noisy carnival procession, and it is now in the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. James Ensor's work, with its harsh colour and strange, mocking crowds, stands apart from the polished art of his time.
James Ensor prints: reproductions of paintings and etchings by the Belgian artist James Ensor, made between 1888 and 1904. The collection includes Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 (1888), The Intrigue (1890), Skeletons Fighting over a Pickled Herring (1891), My Portrait in the Year 1960 (1888) and The Vengeance of Hop-Frog (1898).
This selection concentrates on his masks and skeletons. It includes the complete etching series The Seven Deadly Sins, with its title plate dominated by Death, along with skeletons warming themselves, fighting and painting, and crowds of masked figures. The etchings are black and white; the paintings use harsh reds, greens and yellows.
The etchings suit studies, hallways and home offices and can be hung together as a series; the colourful mask paintings work in living rooms and creative spaces. All prints are museum-quality reproductions, available unframed or framed with low-glare acrylic glazing, with free shipping and import duties covered.
