Belgian 1860-1949 Belgian painter, printmaker and draughtsman. No single label adequately describes the visionary work produced by Ensor between 1880 and 1900, his most productive period. His pictures from that time have both Symbolist and Realist aspects, and in spite of his dismissal of the Impressionists as superficial daubers he was profoundly concerned with the effects of light. His imagery and technical procedures anticipated the colouristic brilliance and violent impact of Fauvism and German Expressionism and the psychological fantasies of Surrealism. Ensor most memorable and influential work was almost exclusively produced before 1900, but he was largely unrecognized before the 1920s in his own country. His work was highly influential in Germany, however: Emil Nolde visited him in 1911, and was influenced by his use of masks; Paul Klee mentions him admiringly in his diaries; Erich Heckel came to see him in the middle of the war and painted his portrait (1930; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.); Alfred Kubin owned several of his prints, while Marc Chagall and George Grosz also adapted certain elements from Ensor. All the artists of the Cobra group saw him as a master. He influenced many Belgian artists including Leon Spilliaert, Rik Wouters, Constant Permeke, Frits van den Berghe, Paul Delvaux and Pierre Alechinsky.  Related Paintings of James Ensor :. | The Poachers | The Cathedral | The Peaches | The Massacre of the Innocents | The Puzzled Masks |
Related Artists:
Jacob Duck
1600-1667 Dutch Jacob Duck Location Dutch painter and etcher. He was long confused with Jan le Ducq (1629/30-76). In 1621 he was listed as an apprentice portrait painter in the records of the Utrecht Guild of St Luke. His teacher was probably Joost Cornelisz. Droochsloot (1586-1666). The St Job Hospital in Utrecht acquired a Musical Company by him in 1629. By 1630-32 he was a master in the guild. Like Pieter Codde, he painted guardroom scenes (kortegaerdjes), for example Soldiers Arming Themselves (c. 1635; New York, H. Shickman Gal., see 1984 exh. cat., no. 36) or the Hoard of Booty (Paris, Louvre), in which the figures and their interactions are apparently full of underlying symbolic meaning. He also painted merry companies (e.g. c. 1630; Names, Mus. B.-A.) and domestic activities, such as Woman Ironing (Utrecht, Cent. Mus.), employing motifs perhaps symbolic of domestic virtue. He placed his figures in high, bare interiors in which the deep local colours of the foreground stand out well against the cool, greyish-brown background. Only a few of his etchings are known (Hollstein, Dut. & Flem., vi, pp. 9-11), depicting figures in contemporary dress, for example Young Gentleman with Broad Hat and Cloak (Hollstein, no. 10) or Virgin and Child with Magi (nos 1-4). Between 1631 and 1649 Duck presence is documented in Utrecht, Haarlem and Wijk bij Duurstede. Afterwards, and probably by 1656, he was living in The Hague. He was buried at the monastery of St Mary Magdalene in Utrecht.
Julius Jacob the Younger
painted in ca. 1910
VASARI, Giorgio
Italian Mannerist Writer and Painter, 1511-1574 Italian painter, architect, and writer. Though he was a prolific painter in the Mannerist style, he is more highly regarded as an architect (he designed the Uffizi Palace, now the Uffizi Gallery), but even his architecture is overshadowed by his writings. His Lives of the Most Eminent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) offers biographies of early to late Renaissance artists. His style is eminently readable and his material is well researched, though when facts were scarce he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps. In his view, Giotto had revived the art of true representation after its decline in the early Middle Ages, and succeeding artists had brought that art progressively closer to the perfection achieved by Michelangelo.