Still life with a cabbage

A single cabbage on a table is about as plain a subject as painting offers, and Ensor returned to that plainness in 1921, past sixty and by then a celebrated name in Belgium. He built the leaves from loose, pale strokes, the outer ones curling and almost silver, the heart tightening into a denser green. Vegetables and kitchen things had turned up in his pictures for forty years, and here he gives a common cabbage the same patient attention other painters saved for fruit or flowers. Nothing is arranged to impress. He lets each brushstroke stay visible instead of smoothing it away, so the paint itself, more than the vegetable, is what holds your eye.