Still Life with Sea Shells

Ensor was in his early sixties when he set out this table in 1923, and he signed and dated it at the lower right. Among a scatter of rare shells stand a Japanese fan and a teacup on its saucer. Up in the right-hand corner a nude figure is only lightly sketched in, easy to miss above the objects. The museum in Boston compares the arrangement to the symbol-laden still lifes of the old Netherlandish painters and to the 18th-century taste for chinoiserie, and also to something brand new in those years, the Paris Surrealists' habit of combing flea markets and junk shops for strange objects. He painted it in oil on paperboard, which was later mounted on a wooden panel. Where it went in its first decades is a small mystery. The Boston dealer who sold it in 1959 would say only that it came from a private collection in Paris, and the back of the panel carries export stamps from Switzerland and from Germany.