Self-Portrait

1860–1949 · Luogo di lavoro

Ostend

1877–1880

Brussels friends and the Rousseau household

At the Academy Ensor befriended Willy Finch, Fernand Khnopff and Théo Hannon, and through Hannon met Ernest Rousseau, a professor at the Free University of Brussels, whose house drew the Brussels avant-garde to debate socialist and anarchist ideas. The lady of the house, Mariette Rousseau, became one of the few women close to him, though she kept him at a certain distance.

1880

A studio in the attic of his parents' house

Disappointed by the dry teaching, Ensor left the Brussels Academy — 'an establishment for the half-blind' — and returned to Ostend, where until 1917 he worked in the attic of his parents' house above his mother's souvenir shop. There he created all his key paintings of the 19th century — even the huge “Christ's Entry into Brussels”, which, under the low ceiling, he painted now kneeling, now standing on a chair.

1880s

Brief trips to France and the Netherlands

Ensor travelled very little: in the 1880s, just three brief trips to France and two to the Netherlands.