Fisherwoman

In 1882 James Ensor was 22 and still painting in dark, earthy browns, years before the grinning masks and skeletons that would make his name. That winter he was working out of a shared Ostend studio, and the sea town's own people were his subjects: fishermen, their wives, the folk who lived off the harbour and the dunes. This is one of them, an Ostend fisherwoman he never named. Look at her hands and you can see he stopped early, a few brown strokes where the fingers should be, while the face is finished and holds you. The painting has had a complicated life since. Its authorship was questioned, and in 1949, the year Ensor died, the panel was taken to the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage in Brussels to be examined, and that doubt has never entirely gone away.