The Intrigue

By 1911 James Ensor was famous, and most of the paintings that had made him famous belonged to other people. So he painted them again. Roughly a dozen of these second versions exist, and a single Belgian collector bought almost half of them as soon as they were finished. This masked crowd is one of them. The first Intrigue dates from 1890 and stayed in Belgium. This one came 21 years later, out of Ostend, where Ensor worked in an attic above the family shop that sold seashells, curios and carnival masks. At the centre a woman grips a man's arm with a wide grin, and 11 masked figures press in around the pair.