Astonishment of the Mask Wouse

Ensor lived almost his whole life above his family's shop in Ostend, a resort on the Belgian coast, where they sold shells, china and carnival masks to summer visitors. That stock went up into his attic studio and became his subject. This painting is that attic. Masks, a violin and a clarinet, an empty bottle, a fan and a top hat lie about on the floorboards like an arranged still life, and a skeleton holds a candle over them. In the middle a figure in a mask and black gloves carries a red parasol, wrapped in an Indian shawl with a baby's head coming out of it. The Antwerp museum that owns the picture says plainly that nobody knows which of these figures the Wouse of the title is, or what is happening in the room.