Dressed in a flamboyantly coloured costume, Ensor stands in the centre, sporting a military busby and seemingly about to pour something over the horizontal figure below, perhaps enacting a part of this strange baptismal ritual.
It was likely Ernest Rousseau père who took the photo. The inspiration for Baptême des masques derives from a photograph taken at around the same time that this work was painted and features Ensor with members of the Rousseau and Nahrath families, standing in the same poses and playful costumes as the figures of the present work. With leering grins, strange masks, enigmatic looks and fanciful costumes, these figures appear amidst an imaginary, almost hallucinatory setting, rendered in a palette of delicate, pearlescent tones. Painted in 1891, Baptême des masques encapsulates this preoccupation, its protagonists posed like actors upon a stage, absorbed in what seems to be a strange ritual or baptism. From the mid-1880s onwards, masks and the carnival came to dominate Ensor’s work, frequently featuring in his bizarre and often satirical paintings, which are entirely unique within the turn-of-the-century avant-garde. And they express all the enigmatic, obscurely mysterious, unpleasant and strangely grotesque side of life’ August Vermeylenįusing the carnival with the commedia dell’arte, Baptême des masques welcomes the viewer into marvellous, fantastical and enigmatic world of the inscrutable Belgian artist, James Ensor. ‘These masks are ghostly, disturbing, they have every characteristic of life, the same frightened impression that is also sensed in a waxwork museum. The mask meant to me: freshness of colour, extravagant decoration, wild generous gestures, strident expressions, exquisite turbulence' 'Hounded by those on my tail, I joyfully took refuge in the land of the fools where the mask, with its violence, its brightness and brilliance, reigns supreme.
cat., James Ensor by Luc Tuymans, London, 2016, p. Tricot, '"Intrigue" by James Ensor', in exh. Tricot, James Ensor, The Complete Paintings, Ostfildern, 2009, no. Tricot, James Ensor, Catalogue raisonné of the Paintings, vol. Ollinger-Zinque, Ensor par lui-même, Brussels, 1976, no. Ollinger-Zinque, ed., Bulletin des Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1966, nos. Legrand, 'Les lettres de James Ensor à Octave Maus', in G. Haesaerts, James Ensor, New York, 1959, no.
Le Roy, James Ensor, Brussels & Paris, 1922, p. Verhaeren, James Ensor, Brussels, 1908, p. The artist's handlist ( Liber Veritatis), circa 1929-1941, no. Du Jardin, 'Le Salon des XX', in La Fédération artistique, vol.
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