Azaleas

In 1937 Oscar Fischer, an Antwerp diamond dealer and a Zionist, was preparing to leave Belgium for Tel Aviv, and before he went he gave a painting by James Ensor to the city's fine arts museum. The head curator, Arthur Cornette, made the choice, and on 27 August he noted that he had picked “that wonderful pink symphony”. Ensor had painted it some years earlier, in the 1920s, and it is the only time he is known to have painted azaleas. They sit in a wicker basket in the middle of a marble ledge, with an alocasia to the right, and around them shells, more baskets, a yellow runner patterned with orange flowers and a tiny nude figurine seen from behind. In the top left corner he copied in one of his own pictures from about 30 years before, the Virgin of Consolation.