Christ calming the water

Ensor painted this in 1906, then wrote 1891 on it. He did the same to other canvases in those years. The loose, dissolving handling that had got him ridiculed in the 1880s was by then turning respectable in Belgian painting, and backdating a picture was his way of putting his claim in first. The subject comes from Matthew's gospel, the storm on the lake and Christ quieting it, and the scene is taken apart into the same pale loaded strokes, boat and wave and sky together. He had painted it once before, genuinely in 1891, and that earlier canvas is in Ostend, the seaside town where he lived above his family's shop selling shells and carnival masks.