Die empörten Masken

1883 was the year a group of Brussels artists founded Les Vingt, the exhibiting society that would bring Seurat, Van Gogh and Gauguin to Belgium over the following decade. Ensor, 23 and living in Ostend, was one of the founders. This canvas, signed and dated that year, is the first time a mask appears in his painting.

He did not have to look far for one. His family kept a souvenir shop in Ostend that sold shells, chinoiserie and carnival masks to summer visitors, and the town's own carnival put the same faces through the streets every winter. What he does with them here is still fairly restrained. The massed grinning crowds and skulls of the later work are not in it yet.

The picture is large for an interior scene, 135 by 112 centimetres. The Brussels museum bought it from Ensor himself in 1920, nearly 40 years after he painted it.