Dunes

In 1877 Ensor turned 17 and left Ostend for the academy in Brussels, where he spent three years drawing from plaster casts. This little study belongs to the months around that move. He painted dozens like it outdoors on small sheets of cardboard, barely a hand's width, in the dunes outside the town. Ostend at that moment was changing fast, from a fishing and garrison port into Belgium's fashionable sea resort, with the railway bringing day visitors down from Brussels and the packet boat running across to Dover. His family lived off exactly that traffic, keeping a souvenir shop on the front that sold shells, chinoiserie and carnival masks. He came back from Brussels in 1880 and spent nearly all the rest of his 89 years in the same town, mostly in an attic room above the shop.