James Ensor and Still Life in Belgium (1830-1930)

This book is published on the occasion of the first exhibition ever entirely dedicated to the still lifes of James Ensor, in Mu.ZEE (Ostend), 16/12/2023 – 17/04/2024. 3 editions: Dutch, English and French.

The book and the exhibition offers a unique journey through the history of still life in Belgium in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with James Ensor as guide. The still life played an important role in the work of the Belgian expressionist and symbolist painter James Ensor (1860-1949). The quality and significance of his intriguing and complex still lifes become clear when they are placed within the broader development of the genre in Belgium, between 1830 and 1930. The still life, which in the early nineteenth century had degenerated into a decorative genre without content and artistic importance, was artistically revalued in the course of the nineteenth century; by monumentalizing it, by enlivening the image with dolls and masks, through exoticism, or by incorporating it into an interior. In that respect, Ensor’s work is the most inventive. Furthermore, his long career contributed to his artistic influence on many artists from 1880 until Modernism. In addition to an examination of this important part of Ensor’s work, the book also provides an overview of the nineteenth-century Belgian academic tradition of decorative painting, with intriguing work by little-known painters such as Jean Robie, Hubert Bellis, Frans Mortelmans and Henri De Braekeleer, and forgotten female artists such as Berthe Art and Alice Ronner. In the early twentieth century, artists such as Louis Thevenet further developed the still life genre in the traditional manner, while innovators such as the late James Ensor, Léon Spilliaert, Marthe Donas, Walter Vaes and Gustave Van de Woestyne made very personal interpretations. The still life tradition ended with artists such as Jean Brusselmans and René Magritte, who deconstructed the pictorial space of the ‘theater of things’.

Curators: Bart Verschaffel, Sabine Taevenier, Stefan Huygebaert
Publishers: Mu.ZEE (Ostend) & Mercatorfonds (Brussels)