James Ensor

Ensor fantastical vision draws upon a rich visual vocabulary in Northern European art of angels and devils. Breughel’s The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1562 (Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels) has been cited as one source; as has Hieronymus Bosch’s Hell, 1480-1505 (Museo del Prado, Madrid). The trials of Saint Anthony as depicted in the famous engraving by Martin Schongauer, circa 1469-73, may also have been an inspiration for Ensor’s vivid phantasmagoria of surreal creatures and grotesque demons. Diana Lasco noted the explicit sexual violence depicted in Diables rossant Anges et Archanges, which is largely directed against its female protagonists. Misogyny was very much part of the decadent milieu of the late 19th century, finding its culmination in the dark fantasies of artist’s such Félicien Rops, whom Ensor greatly admired. As Lasko points out, on a formal level Ensor’s print of 1888 was remarkably progessive: 'The use of space and form affirms the two dimensional surface and patterns it with movement, paving the way for the 20th century abstractions of artists like Kandinsky and Klee.’ (D. Lasko, James Ensor-The Creative Years, Princeton University Press, New Jersey, p. 131).