The Lady with Fan

In 1880 Ensor was 20 and had just left the art academy in Brussels to paint at home in Ostend. For models he had the women of his own household. This tall canvas, inscribed Ensor 80 in the upper right corner, is one of the earliest of about 15 interiors with women from these years, which his friend, the writer Eugène Demolder, called a series of coquettish women. The sitter is usually identified as his younger sister Mitche, though the Antwerp museum treats these pictures as scenes painted from life, with no claim to be portraits. She stands beside a chair with an open fan in her hand. The painting later belonged to Mitche's daughter Alexandra Daveluy, who inherited her uncle's estate when he died in 1949, and the museum bought it in 1955.