Stillleben (Stoffe)

In 1880 Ensor walked out of the Brussels academy without finishing, calling it an establishment for the near-blind, and went home to Ostend, where he took the attic of his parents' house for a studio. Below him the family ran a shop for seaside visitors, selling shells, chinoiserie and carnival masks. This study of draped cloth belongs to those first attic years, when he was still working through the subjects his training had handed him, interiors, landscapes and still lifes in earth colours laid on thin. He was 20, and the painting is now in Ostend at Mu.ZEE, a few streets from where he made it. Within ten years the goods from the shop downstairs had climbed into his pictures, masks included.